8vo (197 x 121 mm). Original tan cloth, gilt-lettered spine (rubbing, darkening to spine). Provenance: Richard Watson Gilder (1844-1909), American poet and author (gift inscription, book label).

"[T]he most vehement feminist tract in English after the Vindication of Mary Wollstonecraft" (Martin Seymour-Smith, The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written, p.353).

FIRST EDITION. The Subjection of Women is an essay written by Mill based on theories developed between himself and his wife, noted women's rights advocate Harriet Taylor Mill, many of whose arguments as previously published in her 1851 essay The Enfranchisement of Women appear here in slightly amended form. He argues that equality between the sexes results in a stronger society as both men and women would then be equally productive in contributing to its enrichment, and that an unequal society is a relic of the past that has no place in the modern world.

In his 1873 autobiography Mill acknowledges his debt to Harriet Taylor Mill, as well as to her daughter Helen: "As ultimately published [The Subjection of Women] was enriched with some important ideas of my daughter's and some passages of her writing. But all that is most striking and profound in what was written by me belongs to my wife, coming from the fund of thought that had been made common to us both by our innumerable conversations and discussions on a topic that filled so large a place in our minds." PMM 345.