Autobiography John Stuart Mill

The bulk of the Autobiography was initially drafted during the ``vintage decade''---which alone would warrant its inclusion here---and beside the natural interest in Mill's interpretation of his own remarkable upbringing and life, it contains useful information for the understanding of his work. For example, there is a paragraph on the ``dissolving force of analysis'' that must surely be directly related to the discussion of the same in Chapter 3 of Utilitarianism.

Source of the Text

This text came from the 'net, tho' not marked up in html, as here. I don't know just where I got it. I suspect that the 'net copy came from the 1924 edition published by Columbia University Press, which was printed from the original manuscript, mostly written in 1870, but unfinished, and as yet unpublished, at Mill's death in 1873. (I say this, because I used the Bobbs-Merrill reprint of the same in doing the html mark-up, and found it, as best I could tell, word for word identical.)

Table of Contents

• Chapter I Childhood and Early Education
• Chapter II Moral Influences in Early Youth. My Father's Character and Opinions
• Chapter III Last Stage of Education and First of Self-Education
• Chapter IV Youthful Propagandism. The Westminster Review
• Chapter V A Crisis in My Mental History. One Stage Onward
• Chapter VI Commencement of the Most Valuable Friendship of My Life. My Father's Death. Writings and Other Proceedings up to 1840.
• Chapter VII General Review of the Remainder of My Life