John Stuart Mill
1806-73
Mill is the British philosopher of the Victorian period. He was born in London, and educated at home by his father, James Mill, who was a friend of Jeremy Bentham, the founder of Utilitarianism. James Mill believed that children could be taught on rational principles from a very young age; and taught his son Greek from the age of 3, and such subjects as mathematics, logic, and economic theory before he reached adolescence. John Stuart Mill became a crusader for social and political reform from a young age, publishing widely and editing the radical journal the London and Westminter Review while still in his twenties, while also working for the East India Company. In his mid-twenties he met Harriet Taylor, an intelligent and gifted woman who became his lifelong friend and collaborator, and whom he married two years after her husband's death. After her death in 1858, her daughter Helen Taylor became Mill's companion and editor. Mill supported various liberal and radical causes, including general political and legal reform and the attempt to prosecute Governor Eyre for the harsh treatment of blacks after the 1866 rebellion. In his brief period as an M.P. between 1865 and 1868, he was one of the foremost male advocates of female suffrage in the period.
Among Mill's many major writings are his groundbreaking System of Logic (1843), Principles of Political Economy (1848) which challenged some conservative notions of labour and value, On Liberty (1859), his account of Utilitarianism (1863), and The Subjection of Women (1869). His posthumous Autobiography is a classic of the genre and period.
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