Books/Writings
John Stuart Mill
fl. c. 1806 – c. 1873
Scottish

Philosopher, economist. Taught ancient Greek and much else by age three by his driving father, James Mill, John Stuart suffered a calamitous nervous breakdown as he approached adulthood. His career remained ambiguous thereafter. On the one hand, many see him as the defender of traditional liberalism, the philosophy of personal liberty, along with free market economics. Others see him as compromising these beliefs in favor of what would prove to be telling encroachments of "big government." He also elaborated, but also in a sense moderated, his father's and Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism, which weighed moral actions solely in terms of consequences, not some sense of their inner worth, and then consequences, not for individuals, but for the masses of people taken as a whole. This was the opposite of Kant and a curious position for an exponent of personal liberty. Muddied or not, Mill's textbook on economics reigned supreme in both the UK and US for half a century.

Contemporaries
1795–1852Fanny Wright
1766–1813Alexander Wilson
1753–1828Dugald Stewart
1850–1894Robert Louis Stevenson
1812–1904Samuel Smiles
1771–1832Sir Walter Scott
1837–1915Sir James Murray
1773–1836James Mill
1813–1873David Livingstone
1870–1950Sir Harry Lauder
1859–1932Kenneth Grahame
1854–1941Sir James Frazer
1723–1816Adam Ferguson
1744–1828Andrew Duncan
1859–1930Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1868–1952George Norman Douglas
1780–1847Thomas Chalmers
1792–1863Sir Colin Campbell
1778–1868Henry Brougham
1795–1860James Braid
1776–1834William Blackwood
1847–1922Alexander Graham Bell
1819–1905Alexander Melville Bell
1818–1903Alexander Bain