University of Virginia Library

1. Organization

Though the general principle governing the division of materials amongst the volumes of the Collected Works is thematic, there are strong generic marks that make the universal application of such a rule ridiculous: for the special purposes of anthologies it is sensible to isolate parts of Mill's System of Logic, for instance, but to dissect that tome and store its bits in bottles labelled "the syllogism," "abstract method," "ethics," "political theory," etc., would be quite irresponsible. So the rule has been applied only to materials, usually periodical essays and short monographs, that are of a length permitting combination within thematic volumes. Within these volumes, a chronological order is followed, although sub-themes could have been used to combine essays. In the Earlier and Later Letters chronology was followed without much hesitation, for the other main option, grouping by correspondent, is of value only when there is a large mass of letters and when both sides of correspondences are substantial; neither of these conditions is sufficiently filled in Mill's case.

I mention these obvious matters only to explain the background to our decision to organize the newspaper writings (and also the journals and speeches that will make up Volumes XXVI-XXVIII) in chronological order. Materials as heterogenous as these generally resist division into themes or subjects, though in Mill's case the newspaper writings provide, as indicated above, two major subjects: French politics in the early 1830s and Irish land in the late 1840s. However, so densely grouped chronologically are these two sets that they cohere even within an ordering by date. Furthermore, some other groupings would be objectionably arbitrary, and there would be a ragtail remnant.

This decision makes it difficult to break the material into coherent units that would serve as "chapters." Since few users of the volumes will read them through from beginning to end, in fact these aids to ease are not essential; nonetheless we introduced breaks into timely intervals that will at least allow the table of contents to be followed without strain; and indeed because of the relation of Mill's journalism to patterns in his life and to external events these "chapters" actually have thematic and sub-generic affinities that are explored in the Introduction.

For each item we provide a title, a headnote, the text, and footnotes. Since all decisions are questionable, some mention of the choice of titles is desirable. It might be thought that, like letters, newspaper writings need no titles; however, many of Mill's were entitled, whether by him or not, and the titles provide an index to the material, as well as making each piece easier to identify in short form. When a title appears on the

copy-text (or on another version of the text that Mill oversaw), it is used, even though there is a likelihood that a large number of them were not chosen by him. The guides to identification mentioned above, Mill's bibliography of his writings and the copy of the Examiner in Somerville College, provide many titles in his own wording or a modification of it. For example, in his bibliography Mill uses two main wordings in listing his news reports on French politics: "summary of French affairs" and "summary of French news"; in the Examiner he normally lists each of these same items as "Article on France": for convenience we adopted "French News" with a bracketed serial number for all of them. In the case of the series on Ireland, which he lists in his bibliography as being on "Irish affairs," we drew from the contents of the articles a more descriptive title, "Condition of Ireland," again with serial numbers to distinguish them one from another. In both these cases the serial numbers are editorially added; in a few cases ("The Spirit of the Age" being the best known) Mill or the newspaper provided numbers for series: to indicate the difference, we used roman numbers for those in the copy-text and arabic for those editorially supplied.

A few titles derive from references to the articles by Mill in letters, and finally some, in addition to the "Condition of Ireland" series, are editorially supplied as appropriate to the contents and genre. The reviews, for example, which are normally headed in the copy-text by bibliographical identifications, are headed in our text by the author's name and the short title of the work under review. The obituary notices are (in conformity to Mill's occasional usage) headed "Death of" the deceased.

Beneath the title is given the provenance and date of publication of the item, while the headnotes indicate, as briefly as is compatible with some obeisance to stylistic decorum and grace, the place of the item in relation to others in the volumes, and the minimal historical information needed as background (a broader scope is given in the Introduction, and more detail in the footnotes). Each headnote also gives the evidence that the item is by Mill and the reason for the choice of title. The context in the newspaper from which it is extracted is sketched (location within a section, general headings, for instance), and finally any information about the choice and treatment of the text (the general account of editing practices is given in a separate Textual Introduction).

Appendices include a speech Mill translated for the Examiner, the French version of the article intended for the National that appeared in the Monthly Repository, the English translation of a speech by Enfantin that Mill prepared for the Examiner, the English version of the unpublished letter intended for La Voix des Femmes, an obituary of Francis

Place that is dubiously attributed to Mill by George J. Holyoake, and lists of editorial interventions, as well as our Index to Persons and Works and an analytic index. Also we provide indexes to items according to their original provenance and to their signatures.