Books

First edition of one of the great statements of the equality of the sexes, recognized as an early contribution in the feminist canon: "Among campaigners for women's suffrage. it rapidly became a sacred text and gave him a position of heroic, almost apostolic, authority within the nascent women's movement" (ODNB). Mill had long been a women's rights advocate, having been influenced by the thinking of his father, the Utilitarian philosopher James Mill, and by his long friendship with, and then marriage to, the philosopher Harriet Taylor Hardy (1807-1858), a passionate advocate for equality. Harriet Taylor's influence on this work was substantial, and acknowledged by Mill: "All that is most striking and profound in what was written by me belongs to my wife, coming from the fund of thought that had been made common to us both by our innumerable conversations and discussions on a topic that filled so large a place in our minds" (Autobiography, 1873, p. 266). The freedom of women can be seen as a microcosm of Mill's general philosophy of freedom, in which the greatest good of the community is inseparable from the liberty of the individual. Mill calls for equal legal, political, and personal rights, including the right to vote and the right to higher education. The essay was Mill's final major political tract and his "most unpopular and bitterly contested" work, the only one "on which he made a financial loss, even though pirated popular editions soon began to circulate widely in Europe and America" (ODNB). Octavo. Original yellow cloth, spine lettered in gilt, brown endpapers. Neat early initialled "J" to half-title verso and title page. Cloth a little soiled and cockled and sometime cleaned, scattered light foxing. A very good copy.

In 'The Subjection of Women', Mill argues for the equality of the sexes and women's rights.