“In his own time and ever since, the most common reaction to the Autobiography has been one of astonishment, mixed with either awe or horror, at his education” – John Robson
At three years old John Stuart Mill was studying arithmetic and Greek; by the time he was six he was enjoying Hume and Gibbon and writing Roman histories. Diffident, intellectually brilliant, fearless and profound, he became one of the greatest of the Victorian liberals and his works – particularly On Liberty, Utilitarianism, The Subjection of Women and this Autobiography – are among the crowning achievements of the age.
“Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so…” Central to the Autobiography is Mill’s moving account of the mental crisis he suffered as a young man, and his discovery of a world of feeling and emotion that drew him away from Benthamite utilitarianism and his father’s ambitions for him and towards the Romantic radicalism of Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon. The tension between thought and feeling, the struggle to improve the individual and society, preoccupied Mill all his life and imbue his Autobiography with enduring integrity and power.
