Indexes to the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

R.G. Moyles is a professor of English at the University of Alberta.

The monumental and magnificent critical edition of the Collected Works
of John Stuart Mill that was commenced in the 1960s by a team of
scholars at the University of Toronto is now complete. This, the
thirty-third volume, fittingly provides the reader with a guide to the
whole project and is indeed “an indispensable route map for scholars
from all historical disciplines concerned with the nineteenth
century.” It is an admirable and meticulous compilation, offering four
separate indexes, each of which recognizes a special scholarly need: an
alphabetical list of titles in the preceding 32 volumes (in two
sections, for Mill and for others); a chronological list of Mill’s
works, offering a succinct overview of his writing career; an index to
“the people and their writings referred to by Mill in all of his
letters and works except his translations”; and a massive cumulative
subject index. The last of these consists of key-words and is the only
one likely to raise questions, though I think that possibility remote
given the editor’s convincing explanation of how the key-words were
arrived at and the comprehensiveness and judiciousness of the whole. As
O’Grady suggests, this index proves that “the very acts of sorting,
gathering, and arranging do bring some of the characteristics of an
author’s work into view.” Thus, while this whole volume is very
practical in its aim, it may nevertheless serve as a very accurate
topical and thematic guide to Mill’s writing career and social
philosophy. The whole scholarly community must congratulate this
editorial team: the feat has been an outstanding one.