John Stuart Mill Victorian Firebrand

'Liberty, individualism and imagination were the essence of Mill's thought, and now that Mill's liberalism seems to have finally run its course, Reeves spells out its implications with exemplary lucidity, thoroughness and brio.' Hilary Spurling, Observer

According to William Gladstone, John Stuart Mill was the 'Saint of Rationalism'. But in this new biography of Britain's greatest public intellectual, Richard Reeves reveals Mill as a man of action: a philosopher and radical MP who profoundly shaped Victorian society and whose thinking continues to illuminate our own.

The product of an extraordinary and unique education, Mill would become in time the most significant English thinker of the nineteenth century, the author of the landmark essay On Liberty and one of the most passionate reformers and advocates of his revolutionary, opinionated age. As a journalist he fired off weekly articles demanding Irish land reform as the people of that nation starved, as an MP he introduced the first vote on women's suffrage, fought to preserve free-speech and opposed slavery, and, in his private life, for two decades pursued a love affair with another man's wife.

To understand Mill and his contribution to his time and ours, Richard Reeves explores his life and work in tandem. His book is both a riveting and authoritative biography of a man raised by his father to promote happiness, whose life was spent in the pursuit of truth and liberty for all.

'Richard Reeves' sparkling new biography can be read as an attempt to do justice to this eminent thinker, and it succeeds triumphantly. Practically every aspect of Mill's life and thought is freshly presented.' John Gray, Independent

'Richard Reeves has assembled an impressive array of material and marshalled it with great style... the pace never slackens, the writing is slick and lucid and there are even some funny stories.' Phil Collins, Daily Telegraph

'An important new biography...Reeves brings Mill vividly to life. Mill, he shows, could hardly have been more removed from the desiccated, calculating machine of anti-Mill legend.' David Marquand, New Statesman

'Thorough and sympathetic... meticulously explored... This is a masterpiece.' Catholic Herald

978 1 84354 644 3

Biography

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

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