The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill by John Stuart Mill.
Skim names here — open a free preview to see character cards and Character Web beside the page as you read.
John Stuart Mill
major
Also known as I, me, myself, mine
Raised by a father who treated his mind as an instrument for reforming the world, he grows up with an object in life rather than a childhood. When that object—being a reformer—suddenly loses its power to make him happy, he must ask whether the whole edifice of his education can hold. His account of that unraveling, and of the reading and friendships that pulled him through, is the spine of the book's early and middle arc.
Jeremy Bentham
supporting
Also known as Mr. Bentham, Bentham
Bentham is the intellectual patron of Mill's circle: he funds the Westminster Review at his own cost and hands its editorship to Bowring when Mill's father declines. His system gives the young Mill a creed and a cause, but its cold arithmetic of utility will later feel like a cage. He matters because the book's central drama—Mill outgrowing the philosophy he was raised on—begins with Bentham's shadow.
Harriet Taylor
major
Also known as Mrs. Taylor
She enters Mill's world as a married woman and intellectual equal, and their bond becomes the most consequential relationship of his life. Where his father and Bentham trained him to reason, she pushes him to feel—to weigh sympathy, individuality, and the claims of the heart. Her presence marks the turn in the autobiography from a story of education to a story of self-recovery.
John Austin
supporting
Also known as Mr. John Austin, Mr. Austin
Austin belongs to the tight network of utilitarians and radicals around Bentham, and his friendship with Mill runs through the Westminster Review years. He represents the possibility of a life in which philosophy and domestic affection coexist, something Mill's own upbringing denied him. His presence helps show the reader the intellectual community Mill moved in—and what he stood to lose when that community's certainties cracked.
Thomas Carlyle
supporting
Also known as Carlyle
Carlyle stands at the opposite pole from Benthamite utility: where the radicals calculate, he thunders about heroes, work, and the soul. Mill's engagement with him—admiring, arguing, sometimes exasperated—shows a mind testing itself against an outlook it cannot fully adopt. He matters because he embodies the alternative to Mill's inherited creed, and the friendship dramatizes how far Mill was willing to travel from his father's world.
John Sterling
supporting
Also known as Sterling
Sterling moves through Mill's early adulthood as a friend of warmth and spiritual hunger, the kind of intimate Mill's austere education had scarcely allowed him. Their bond offers relief from the relentless intellectual labor of Mill's days and hints at the emotional life he was only beginning to discover. He matters because he is part of what draws Mill out of isolation and into the fuller humanity his later thought would champion.
George Grote
supporting
Also known as Mr. Grote, Grote
Grote belongs to the tight Philosophical Radical cohort around Mill and his father, the allies who launched the Westminster Review in 1824 against the Whig Edinburgh. His attacks on the governing classes' habit of writing on both sides of every question gave the young Mill a model of principled political combat. He matters because he shows how Mill's intellectual formation was bound up with a militant, argumentative circle rather than solitary study.
John Arthur Roebuck
supporting
Also known as Roebuck, John
Roebuck moves in the same combative radical world as Mill — debating societies, the Westminster Review, and the campaign against Whig complacency. Mill prized such company precisely because he wished his personal sympathies to be those of fellow labourers in a shared enterprise. Roebuck embodies the fellowship and friction of that circle, the human counterweight to Mill's famously rigorous, isolating education.
Samuel Bentham
minor
Also known as General Sir Samuel Bentham, Sir Samuel Bentham, Samuel, Sir Samuel
Jeremy Bentham's brother, a naval engineer and administrator mentioned in Mill's early life.
John Bowring
minor
Also known as Mr. Bowring, Bowring
Political economist and editor, a follower of Bentham and later executor of his works.
Auguste Comte
supporting
Also known as M. Comte, Comte, Auguste Comte
Comte stands behind Mill's great work on logic and induction, supplying matter that Mill reworked while defending his own empirical philosophy against rivals like Whewell. The relationship is one of genuine intellectual debt crossed by sharp disagreement, a tension that sharpens Mill's arguments rather than softening them. He matters because he represents the continental currents Mill had to confront and convert to his own use.
William Wordsworth
supporting
Also known as Wordsworth
Wordsworth enters Mill's life at the crisis of 1826–27, when a mind trained to analysis found no pleasure in anything and asked whether life was worth continuing. The poetry offered what Benthamite education had starved: cultivated feeling and fresh associations of delight. He matters because his influence marks the turn in Mill's autobiography from a purely reasoning machine toward a whole person, the hinge on which the book's emotional arc depends.
David Ricardo
minor
Also known as Ricardo, David Ricardo, Mr. Ricardo
Economist whose theories shaped Mill's early economic thought and the Utilitarian circle.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
minor
Also known as Coleridge
Poet and philosopher whose ideas Mill contrasted with Benthamite utilitarianism.
Charles Austin
minor
Also known as Charles Austin, Austin, Charles
Lawyer and early friend of Mill, known for his debating skill and radical views.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
minor
Also known as Lord Macaulay, Macaulay
Historian and Whig politician who criticized Mill's essay on government.
John Black
minor
Also known as Mr. John Black, Black
Editor of the Morning Chronicle, a supporter of radical causes and Mill's early writings.
William Molesworth
minor
Also known as Sir William Molesworth, Molesworth
Politician and editor of the Westminster Review, a fellow Philosophical Radical.
Charles Buller
minor
Also known as Charles Buller, Buller
Politician and reformer, a close associate of Mill in radical politics.
John Ramsay McCulloch
minor
Also known as McCulloch
Economist and statistician, a contemporary whose work Mill engaged with.
Charles Bradlaugh
minor
Also known as Mr. Bradlaugh
Secularist and political activist, mentioned in Mill's later parliamentary context.
John Henry Newman
minor
Also known as Maurice, Frederick Maurice
Theologian and leader of the Oxford Movement, discussed in Mill's intellectual context.
John Henry Thompson
minor
Also known as Fonblanque
Journalist and editor of the Examiner, a friend of Mill.
John Henry Bridges
minor
Also known as Mr. Bain
Philosopher and associate of Mill, later a biographer and critic.
Plato
minor
Also known as Plato
Ancient Greek philosopher whose dialogues Mill studied and admired.
William Whewell
minor
Also known as Dr. Whewell
Philosopher and scientist, a critic of Mill's inductive logic.
John Bright
minor
Also known as Mr. Bright
Radical politician and orator, a contemporary figure in reform movements.
John Ramsay
minor
Also known as Mr. Bingham, Bingham
A minor acquaintance or figure in Mill's early social circle.
