Published by Atlantic Books, 2008, hardcover, illustrated, index, 616 pages, 16.2 cms x 24 cms x 5.5 cms, condition: new.
The definitive life of John Stuart Mill, one of the heroic giants of Victorian England
Richard Reeves' sparkling new biography can be read as an attempt to do justice to this eminent thinker, and it succeeds triumphantly. He reveals Mill as a man of actiona philosopher and radical MP who profoundly shaped Victorian society and whose thinking continues to illuminate our own. The product of an extraordinary and unique education, Mill would become in time the most significant English thinker of the nineteenth century, the author of the landmark essay On Liberty, and one of the most passionate reformers and advocates of his revolutionary, opinionated age. As a journalist he fired off weekly articles demanding Irish land reform as the people of that nation starved, as an MP he introduced the first vote on women's suffrage, fought to preserve free-speech, and opposed slaveryand, in his private life, for two decades pursued a love affair with another man's wife. To understand Mill and his contribution to his time and ours, Richard Reeves explores his life and work in tandem. The result is both a riveting and authoritative biography of a man raised by his father to promote happiness, whose life was spent in the pursuit of truth and liberty for all.
"Diderot is to have said of Leibniz that "Perhaps never has a man read as much, studied as much, meditated more, and written more than Leibniz" and concluded that "When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz, one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner." I contend the same can be said of J.S. Mill. Subject to an absolutely torturous educational regime by his father (He had read Plato in the original Greek while he was 6 years old), Mill would emerge as an absolute genius- if we are to define genius as Carlyle did as "energy"- who would eloquently express his (radical) ideas on feminism, individuality, liberty, marriage, etc. Reeves's biography is an excellent study that not only tells of the life of Mill, but also explains his theory with a generous sprinkling of Mill's own words."
