Table Of ContentJ.S. Mill Revisited
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J.S. Mill Revisited
Biographical and
Political Explorations
Bruce L. Kinzer
J.S. MILLREVISITED
Copyright © Bruce L. Kinzer, 2007.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-4039-8068-7
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ISBN 978-1-349-53874-4 ISBN 978-0-230-60709-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230607095
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kinzer, Bruce L., 1948–
J.S. Mill revisited : biographical and political explorations / Bruce L.
Kinzer.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-349-53874-4
1. Mill, John Stuart, 1806–1873. 2. Political scientists—Great
Britain—Biography. 3. Philosophers—England—Biography. I. Title.
JC223.M66K56 2007
320.092—dc22 [B] 2007009018
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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First Edition: October 2007
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For Deborah, Anna, Amanda,
Jon, Kian, and Lara
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C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
One The Father, the Son, and the Manly Spirit 8
Two Gathering Truths, 1826–30 43
Three Mill and Harriet Taylor: The Early Years 77
Four Mystifying the Mystic: Mill and Carlyle
in the 1830s 112
Five Mill and the Secret Ballot 146
Six Mill and the Problem of Party 164
Seven Mill and the Experience of Political Engagement 179
Notes 205
Index 232
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
Earlier versions of three of the chapters in this book appeared in print
under the following titles and in the following places: “J.S. Mill and
the Secret Ballot,” Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques 5 (1978):
19–39; “J.S. Mill and the Problem of Party,” Journal of British Studies 21
(1981): 106–22; “John Stuart Mill and the Experience of Political
Engagement,” in A Cultivated Mind: Essays on J.S. Mill Presented to John
M. Robson, edited by Michael Laine (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1991), 182–214. I am grateful to the editors, journals, and pub-
lishers concerned for permission to reprint these items in a revised form.
I am also grateful to the University of Toronto Press for allowing me to
quote liberally from the great Toronto edition of The Collected Works of
John Stuart Mill (1963–91). Mill scholars everywhere owe an enormous
debt to John M. Robson, the general editor of the Collected Works, and
none can possibly owe more than I. The chapter on Mill and Carlyle
could not have been written without use of the superb Duke University
Press edition of The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle
(general editor, Charles Richard Sanders). For permission to quote
extensively from this edition, I wish to thank Duke University Press.
I am also grateful to Indiana University Press for permission to quote at
some length from The Complete Works of Harriet Taylor Mill, edited by Jo
Ellen Jacobs (1998). I want to express my appreciation to the National
Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, for allowing me to quote
from the diary of Henry Cole, material reproduced with the kind
permission of the Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
One person especially, my friend Jeff Lipkes, had a close association
with the four biographical chapters in this book. He read each with great
care and offered much penetrating criticism (along with words of
comfort). I am grateful for the use to which he applied his acute intellect
and impressive knowledge of Mill, and more grateful for his friendship.
Acknowledgments ix
Martin Sheppard also read early versions of these chapters, and provided
excellent editorial advice. I asked my wife, Deborah Kinzer, to read a
draft introduction to this book, and her astute comments produced
changes in tone that I can now see were sorely needed. William
McCulloh and Patricia McCulloh kindly agreed to read the piece on
Mill and Carlyle, and their observations gave rise to a number of
improvements. I thank them. As I do my dear friend Ann Robson, who
made available to me valuable material on Mill’s activity compiled by
members of the Mill Project in days past. Most of the writing done for
the biographical chapters was carried out during the 2004–05 academic
year, when I was on leave. The generous sympathy of my colleagues in
Kenyon’s Department of History, together with the gracious support of
the Provost of the College, made this leave possible. A version of the
first chapter in this book was presented to the Kenyon Seminar, whose
members furnished both welcome encouragement and stimulating critical
commentary. For mistakes in this book, of fact or judgment, I am alone
responsible.
As for the crowded character of the dedication page, the persons
named are immeasurably precious to me, and an opportunity of this kind
may not come again.
