Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
John Stuart Mill
-
Standard Name: Mill, John Stuart
Used Form: J. S. Mill
JSM
was a leader in the intellectual life of the nineteenth century and of liberal or progressive thought. He wrote numerous philosophical works, publishing essays, newspaper articles, reviews, letters, and pamphlets over approximately sixty years. Best-known to feminists is Of the Subjection of Women, 1869. Harriet Taylor
, whom he married after her husband's death, was a major influence on him.
In 1833, as she grew more intimate with Mill
, her husband tried to stop the friendship. In response to this HT
suggested that she and John Taylor
should separate.
Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge.
Family and Intimate relationships
Helen Taylor
Two years later, Harriet Taylor
married John Stuart Mill
, who had already shared her life and that of her children for some time.
Hayek, Friedrich Augustus von et al. John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor; Their Correspondence [i.e. Friendship] and Subsequent Marriage. University of Chicago Press.
169
Helen was present at the ceremony, together with her brother Algernon.
Family and Intimate relationships
Harriet Taylor
When HT
returned to England, she and her husband agreed to maintain the facade of marriage, while placing no restrictions on her friendship with Mill
.
Banks, Olive. The Biographical Dictionary of British Feminists. New York University Press.
208
Rose, Phyllis. Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages. Alfred A. Knopf.
113
Wealth and Poverty
Helen Taylor
Following Mill
's death, HT
inherited the house in Avignon which he had bought in order to be close to her mother
's grave.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.
Despite their efforts to avoid scandal, HT
's relationship with John Stuart Mill
remained the subject of much gossip.
Banks, Olive. The Biographical Dictionary of British Feminists. New York University Press.
208
Rumours travelled through London's Unitarian
circles.
Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge.
Both Mill's father, James Mill
, and his friend...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Rose Tremain
This book opens by looking back just over a century, when John Stuart Mill
presented petitions to parliament on behalf of women's suffrage in 1866 and 1867. It relates the story of the suffragist movement...
Textual Features
Mary Augusta Ward
The suffrage plot is the vehicle for a conventional romance in which the misguided heiress of an English country estate is tutored in social responsibility, and finally in love, by an exemplary bachelor barrister. The...
Education
Harriet Shaw Weaver
HSW
's family encouraged her in the regular pursuits of a young, middle-class Victorian woman. From her father she inherited an enthusiasm for poetry—she especially liked Shakespeare
, Coleridge
, and Whitman
—and she read...
Author summary
Frances Wright
FW
was a writer in many genres: her œuvre includes a tragedy and a philosophical essay, but is dominated by political and feminist social critique, much of it taking the apparently ephemeral forms of lectures...
