Books

First edition of the one of the greatest manifestos of individualism ever written, advocating a complete personal freedom save where necessarily restricted to prevent harm, and establishing individual rights that neither government nor democratic majority can overrule. On Liberty "has been viewed by posterity as the kernel of [Mill's] social philosophy" (ODNB). "Many of Mill's ideas are now the commonplaces of democracy. His arguments for freedom of every kind of thought and speech have never been improved on. He was the first to recognize the tendency of a democratically elected majority to tyrannize over a minority" (PMM). Provenance: "James Mackintosh Wedgewood, From, FSW, February 1859" inscribed on the front free endpaper verso. James Mackintosh Wedgwood (1834-1864), great-grandson of Josiah Wedgwood, secured a position in the Colonial Office in 1858. Octavo. Original brown vertical-ribbed cloth, sympathetically rebacked in unlettered cloth, covers panelled in blind, red coated endpapers. With 16 pp. publisher's advertisements tipped-in at rear. With 20th-century "Clute" bookplate to front pastedown. Light bumping and wear, minor fading to cloth, faint browning to endpapers and outer leaves, endpapers neatly reinforced in hinges: a good copy in the original fragile cloth binding. Hazlitt, The Free Man's Library, p. 116; MacMinn, Hainds & McCrimmon, p. 92; Printing and the Mind of Man 345.