ABSTRACT
The title of this little brochure hardly indicates its main subject or interest. In a sense the topic is even narrower than the title suggests, since ‘early’ is used entirely with reference to John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty (1859). But though the survey of the reception accorded to this classic work is both useful and interesting, the main merit of the study is its cautious, yet, to the reviewer, convincing demonstration that an essay published under Mill’s name in 1907 under the title On Social Freedom2 and reprinted in book form in 1941 is not by Mill. Apparently what happened is that a paper submitted to Mill for criticism in 1862 by a Mr. E. R. Edger and commented upon by Mill in his published correspondence was found among Mill’s papers at Avignon by Mrs. Mill’s granddaughter, Mary Taylor. It is not known who was responsible for its original publication in the Oxford and Cambridge Review. If one did not know that Miss Mary Taylor’s judgment was, to put it mildly, somewhat erratic and that whoever published the essay in the review may never have seen the original manuscript, one might seriously doubt the good faith of that publication.
