Autobiography

by John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill wrote his memoir because while he described his life as “uneventful” he thought it might be of interest to people because of his “unusual and remarkable” education. He also wanted to acknowledge the varied thinkers who had influenced him. This included his wife, Harriet Taylor, with whom he worked closely. Mill wrote that his most famous book, On Liberty, “was more directly and literally our joint production than anything else which bears my name, for there was not a sentence of it that was not several times gone through by us together, turned over in many ways, and carefully weeded of any faults, either in thought or expression, that we detected in it.”