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Lot 264

MILL (JOHN STUART)
On Liberty, FIRST EDITION, AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY TO ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, John W. Parker, 1859

11 November 2015, 13:00 GMT
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £110,500 inc. premium

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MILL (JOHN STUART)

On Liberty, FIRST EDITION, AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY TO ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, inscribed "à Monsieur Alexis de Tocqueville / hommage d'admiration et d'amitié / J.S.M." on title, unopened in publisher's purple cloth, spine faded, few minor stains on upper cover [PMM 345], 8vo, John W. Parker, 1859

Footnotes

The book arrived some two months before Tocqueville's death; he "acknowledged it at once. 'Nor do I doubt for a moment that in the field of liberty we will always march forward shoulder to shoulder'... He looked forward to reading the book, but there is no evidence that he ever did so - not surprising, given the state of his health, but deeply regrettable, for if he had he would have seen his own influence stamped deep on almost every page of Mill's masterpiece" (Brogan, p. 627). Mill "was the first to recognize the tendency of a democratically elected majority to tyrannize over a minority" (PMM). We can trace no signed or inscribed copy of On Liberty in the auction records.

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