‘MILL’S MASTERPIECE’PRESENTATION COPY
MILL, James.
Elements of Political Economy … Second edition, revised and corrected.
London, [C. Baldwin] for Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1824.
8vo, pp. viii, 304; pp. 300–304 publisher’s advertisements; title, final page, and endpapers browned, with the occasional spot, pp. 18–19 and 51–52 with slight offsetting and impressions left by pressed flowers, else a very good copy; bound in early twentieth-century green cloth, spine lettered directly in gilt; corners and endcaps very slightly bumped and frayed, small chip to front free endpaper; ink presentation inscription (very slightly shaved at outer margin) to title: ‘To Thomas L. Peacock Esq[.] | from his sincere Friend | The Author’ (see below).
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Elements of Political Economy … Second edition, revised and corrected.
Second edition of ‘Mill’s masterpiece’ (Palgrave), extensively revised with alterations ‘too numerous to be specified’, our copy with a presentation inscription to Mill’s former colleague at the East India Company, Thomas Love Peacock, signed ‘his sincere Friend The Author’.
First published in 1821, the Elements of Political Economy are – according to the author’s son, John Stuart Mill – based on the father’s instructions given in the course of their daily walks. In the preface to the first edition, Mill wrote: ‘My object has been to compose a schoolbook of Political Economy; to detach the essential principles of the science from all extraneous topics, to state the propositions clearly and in their logical order, and to subjoin its demonstration to each’; he professes, however, to have ‘made no discovery’. Although McCulloch criticises the book for being ‘of too abstract a character to be either popular or of much utility’, Mill is ‘naturally regarded as the interpreter of his contemporaries, especially of Ricardo his intimate friend’, and the Elements are particularly valuable as a summary of contemporary received theories. It was translated into French in 1823.
This copy is inscibed by Mill to his friend, the satirical novelist and poet Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866). Mill and Peacock worked together for many years in the examiner’s office of the East India Company, and Peacock succeeded Mill as the company’s examiner. ‘Through James Mill [Peacock] became acquainted with almost all the leading philosophical radicals, including Bentham … He also influenced the careers of Henry Cole and John Arthur Roebuck by introducing them to John Stuart Mill’ (ODNB).
Einaudi 3893; Goldsmiths’ 24051; Kress C.1295; Mattioli 2395; McCulloch, p. 17.
