ABSTRACT
William Thornton’s friendship with the ‘Victorian sage’ overlapped with what has become known as ‘the third, mature stage’ in Mill’s life journey (Robson 1989:7). This final phase of his life has, as Lipkes (1999:3) correctly notes, ‘received comparatively little attention’ from intellectual historians, although it saw Mill’s re-emergence from seclusion following the death in 1858 of his beloved wife, Harriet Taylor and covered his association with the last classical economists, the Blackheath Park circle, an exclusive group of economists who met over Sunday dinner at Mill’s Blackheath Park residence when he was in London. It also included the continuation and ripening of his close friendship and collaborative relationship with William Thomas Thornton.
