BOOKS FROM 1900
Sir Leslie Stephen
The English Utilitarians
(1900)
Leslie Stephen, now known as the father of Virginia Woolf, was one of the eminent Victorians. Stephen was responsible for the colossal achievement of The Dictionary of National Biography. He edited the first 21 volumes and contributed nearly 400 entries. His high-strung temperament and the strain of overwork brought on a nervous breakdown.
Stephen's wife, Julia Duckworth persuaded him to resign as editor and encouraged him to take up a history of English Utilitarians. It was a sequel to his History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. Stephen traced the progress of the Utilitarian movement for three generations, from Jeremy Bentham to James and John Stuart Mill.
Despite interruptions and complaints about "the Utilitarian bog," Stephen complemented the three-volume work in 1900. "My damned book is now done even to the title-page," he wrote to his friend F.W. Maitland. "I could write a good slashing review of it."
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