Books

London: John W. Parker and Son, 1859. First edition. 8vo, publisher's original brown ribbed cloth with russet endpapers, the boards paneled in blind, the spine panel with two paper labels lettered in manuscript. With the Baronial engraved bookplate of Thomas Ashton of Hyde, British philanthropist, politician, and peer. 207, [1] colophon, 16 ads. pp. A fine and bright copy internally, the text especially fresh, a few pencil notations of interest but easily removed if desired, the boards are only lightly age mellowed and with a bit of mottling, unfaded and with little wear, the spine with loss to the cloth at both tips. FIRST EDITION OF THE GREAT TEXT ON LIBERTY, one of the scarcest Mill first editions and the one which remains his most widely read book. It is also the work Mill himself thought most likely to be of enduring value. ON LIBERTY represents the final stage in the growth of Utilitarian doctrine, and its central point is one which had escaped both Mill's…