I have recently completed adding name authorities to the Mill-Taylor collection - the papers and correspondence of John Stuart Mill, his father James, his wife Harriet Mill-Taylor and her daughter Helen Taylor.
John Stuart Mill
Adding name authorities to a collection allows users to search more precisely on the online catalogue. The most challenging part of adding name authorities to a collection is matching the names that appear in file descriptions with those already recorded as name authorities. Is it the same person? Depending on how much information we have already, a bit of detective work is often needed. It could just be that different people have the same name, but it could also be that the same person appears in different collections. Sometimes it’s easy to decide if it is the same person because the information fits exactly. Sometimes it is more difficult.
Helen Taylor
The Mill-Taylor collection consists mainly of letters, so the best way to work out if a correspondent is the same person as one that appears in another collection is to check the letter for clues or compare the handwriting with other letters.
By doing this, I found a number of surprising links between collections that may not have been apparent otherwise. For example, the politician Lord John Morley (1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn) corresponded with John Stuart Mill (MILL-TAYLOR/2) and Helen Taylor (MILL-TAYLOR/5). From searching the online catalogue we can also see that he corresponded with:
Frederic Harrison (HARRISON/52-94)
Leonard Courtney
Leonard Courtney (COURTNEY/3, 5-7, 11, 13-15, 19)
Edmund Morel
Edmund Morel (MOREL/F9/12, F10/9)
Sidney & Beatrice Webb
Sidney & Beatrice Webb (PASSFIELD/2/4/A, B, G)
2009 marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of one of Mills’ most famous works, ‘On Liberty’.
Tags: Economics, Government, John Stuart Mill, Liberal Party, Philosophy, Webbs