John Stuart Mill 
Utilitarianism (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) 

John Stuart Mills Utilitarianism, which first appeared in three installments of Frasers Magazine in 1861, was intended as a defense of the notorious doctrine identified with the liberal reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and with the authors father, James Mill (1773-1836). The defense was successful. While ‘the principle of utility, or as Bentham has latterly called it, the greatest happiness principle, ‘ may have scandalized Victorian England, Mills Utilitarianism became one of the defining documents of modern British and American liberalism. It is impossible to appreciate contemporary social and political life without coming to grips with utilitarianism.

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John Stuart Mill was born in a suburb of London on May 20, 1806. By the age of ten he was reading classical authors in the original Greek and Latin; was proficient in history, algebra, and geometry; and soon after began to study logic, political economy, and law. He was elected to Parliament in 1865 and held the Radical seat at Westminster for the next three years. Mill died in Avignon, France, on May 7, 1873.