The English Utilitarians: Volume I

by Leslie Stephen

The Utilitarians, Stephen argues, were social reformers first and philosophers second, if at all. The history of philosophy is not an isolated domain governed by the unfolding of a timeless inner logic; rather it is an integral part of the history of humanity. "The English Utilitarians of whom I am about to give some account were a group of men who for three generations had a conspicuous influence upon English thought and political action. Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill were successively their leaders; and I shall speak of each in turn." Sir Leslie Stephen was the first serious critic of the novel, and he was also editor of the great Dictionary of National Biography from its beginning in 1882 until 1891. In 1859 he was ordained a minister. As a tutor at Cambridge his philosophical readings led him to skepticism, and later he relinquished his holy orders. He wrote several essays defending his agnostic position. Throughout his life Stephen was a prominent athlete and mountaineer. Virginia Woolf was the younger of his two daughters by his second wife. His first wife was Harriet Marian Thackeray, daughter of the novelist. This is volume one of a three volume set.

Genres: Philosophy

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Sir Leslie Stephen, KCB was an English author, critic and mountaineer, and the father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell.
Leslie Stephen was the primary editor of the Dictionary of National Biography from 1885-1891

Stephen was born at Kensington Gore in London, the brother of James Fitzjames Stephen and son of Sir James Stephen. His family had belonged to the Clapham Sect, the early 19th century group of mainly evangelical Christian social reformers. At his father's house he saw a good deal of the Macaulays, James Spedding, Sir Henry Taylor and Nassau Senior. After studying at Eton College, King's College London and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. (20th wrangler) in 1854 and M.A. in 1857, Stephen remained for several years a fellow and tutor of his college. He recounted some of his experiences in a chapter in his Life of Fawcett as well as in some less formal Sketches from Cambridge: By a Don (1865). These sketches were reprinted from the Pall Mall Gazette, to the proprietor of which, George Smith, he had been introduced by his brother. It was at Smith's house at Hampstead that Stephen met his first wife, Harriet Marian (1840 – 1875), daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, with whom he had a daughter, Laura Makepeace Stephen (1870 – 1945); after her death he married Julia Prinsep Jackson (1846 – 1895), widow of Herbert Duckworth. With her he had four children: Vanessa, Thoby, Virginia & Adrian.

In the 1850s, Stephen and his brother James Fitzjames Stephen were invited by Frederick Denison Maurice to lecture at The Working Men's College. Leslie Stephen became a member of the College's governing College Corporation. He died in Kensington.