University of Virginia Library

An earlier version of this paper was presented to a symposium on editing and text in Charlottesville, Virginia, 20-23 April 1985. Some details, in modified form, appear in the Textual Introduction to the Newspaper Writings, ed. A. P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), Vols. XXII-XXV of Mill's Collected Works. As all the volumes are published by the University of Toronto Press, subsequent citations will give only the date of publication.

Autobiography, ed. John M. Robson and Jack Stillinger, Collected Works, Vol. I (1981), p. 35.

For a discussion of others who present comparable problems, see H. J. Jackson, ed., Editing Polymaths: Erasmus to Russell (Toronto: Conference on Editing Problems, 1983).

See my "Principles and Methods in the Collected Edition of John Stuart Mill," in Editing Nineteenth-Century Texts, ed. John M. Robson (1967), pp. 96-122.

Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society, ed. J. M. Robson, Collected Works, Vol. X (1969), p. 493.

Coningsby, Book VII, Chap. ii.

It is extremely unlikely that he wrote in newspapers to make money, though some of his journalism probably added slightly to his regular income from the East India Company, which was substantial from his twentieth year until his retirement in 1858. Unfortunately, there is almost no evidence about his income; it is consistent with his character and circumstances, as well as his expressed beliefs, however, to think of him as a journalist out of conviction, not out of need or greed.

"Fonblanque's England under Seven Administrations," Essays on England and the Empire, ed. Robson, Collected Works, Vol. VI (1982), p. 351.

"Writings of Junius Redivivus [I]," Collected Works, Vol. I, p. 373.

"Fonblanque's England under Seven Administrations," p. 352. This irresistible passage is quoted in Ann P. and John M. Robson, "'Impetuous eagerness': The Young Mill's Radical Journalism," in Joanne Shattock and Michael Wolff, eds., The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings and Soundings (1982), p. 61; this article contains other evidence of Mill's attitude to journalism, and more will be found in Ann P. Robson's Introduction to the Newspaper Writings.

The total of these is 424; there are three anomalous items, explained in note 12 below. The items are attributed to the papers for which they were intended, so the unpublished items are included; one piece, intended for Le National, in fact appeared in the Monthly Repository because the former paper ceased publication before the letter could be printed.

The table below shows these two distributions combined:

Two of these are letters written in the early 1850s for publication in connection with the dispute over publishers' restrictive practices; the other is a draft concerning the Westminster election of 1865, enclosed in a letter to Edwin Chadwick, and obviously intended for public use, though we have not found it in a newspaper.

The manuscript in the London School of Economics, edited by Ney MacMinn, et al., as Bibliography of the Published Writings of J. S. Mill (1945), henceforth referred to as MacMinn, will appear in re-edited form in the concluding volume of the Collected Works.

John Stuart Mill (1882).

See F. A. Hayek's Introduction to Mill, The Spirit of the Age (1942), p. xxvi n.

See Ann P. and John M. Robson, "John Stuart Mill's Annotated Examiner Articles," Victorian Periodicals Newsletter, X (Sept., 1977), 122-129. We there describe the three volumes for 1830 and 1832-33; subsequently we located two more, for 1831 and 1834.

MacMinn, p. 96; he points out that in fact three further items are listed (see pp. 98, 99). In fact, drafts of all those located in newspapers have not evidently survived; however, some clippings of letters are in the Mill/Taylor Collection in the London School of Economics.

One item in Mill's list remains unlocated: "An article on wages and profits, capital and prices, which appeared in the Edinburgh Times of May 1825" (MacMinn, p. 6). We believe we have correctly identified, however, "A short letter on which appeared in the Morning Chronicle of 1824" (ibid.) as "Effects of Periodical Literature" (26 Dec. 1824).

Cf. the more elegant phrasing of Fredson Bowers, with reference to the texts in Vol. V of The Works of Stephen Crane (1970), "Foreword," p. ix: "That the newspapers of this country [the U.S.A.] have been exhausted would be an idle hope. . . ."

For an interesting account of informed judgments on a literary newspaper text, see James B. Meriwether's "Textual Apparatus" in Voltmeier; or, The Mountain Men, Vol. I of The Writings of William Gilmore Simms (1969), pp. 437-440.

Cf. Fredson Bowers, "Foreword," Works of Crane, Vol. V, p. x.

"Jurisprudence," Essays [1825], p. 4n.

For a "very complicated" example, see Fredson Bowers, "The Text of the Virginia Edition," Bowery Tales, Vol. I of The Works of Stephen Crane (1969), p. xvi n.

This view is too extreme for me to attribute it to Professor Bowers, but cf. "The Text of the Virginia Edition," p. xvii: "This aim [of establishing the text in a form as close as possible to the author's final intentions] compels the editor to treat each work as a unit, with its own separate textual problems." This dictum is repeated on p. xviii with specific reference to newspaper writings.

MacMinn, p. 76. For a witty and wise investigation of this problem in relation to one of Mill's major works, see Jack Stillinger, "Who Wrote J. S. Mill's Autobiography?" Victorian Studies, 27 (1983), 7-23.