First edition. 8vo. xvi, 567, [1] pp., frontispiece black and white photographic portrait of J.S. Mill. Original red cloth, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, top edge in red, dust jacket (some faint spotting to fore edge, otherwise internally clean; jacket worn at extremities with chipping to ends of spine panel, notwithstanding a very good copy overall). London, Secker and Warburg, 1954.
With a preface by F. A. von Hayek, who had published the letters between Mill and his wife Harriet in 1951; Hayek declares that ‘there may still be details to be filled in here and there; but on the whole I feel that Mr. Packe has given us the definitive biography of Mill for which we have so long been waiting’. Hayek was fascinated by Mill, who was undeniably a forerunner of his own brand of liberalism, and yet who he felt had wrongly departed from the principles of Adam Smith.
