Front Page Authors (by Period) Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer

1820 - 1903

About the Author

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was one of the leading 19th century English radical individualists. He began working as a journalist for the laissez-faire magazine The Economist in the 1850s. Much of the rest of his life was spent working on an all-encompassing theory of human development based upon the ideas of individualism, utilitarian moral theory, social and biological evolution, limited government, and laissez-faire economics. [The image comes from “The Warren J. Samuels Portrait Collection at Duke University.”]

See the Timeline of the Life and Work of Herbert Spencer:

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Key: events in the author’s life (blue); historical events (green); books & organisations (red)

In The Library:

• author: The Data of Ethics (1879)
• author: Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects (1861)
• author: Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative, 3 vols. (1852)
• author: Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative, Vol. 1 (1852)
• author: Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative, Vol. 2 (1854)
• author: Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative, vol. 3 (1854)
• author: First Principles (1867)
• author: Justice: Being Part IV of the Principles of Ethics (1879)
• author: The Man versus the State (1885 ed.) (1884)
• author: The Man versus the State, with Six Essays on Government, Society and Freedom (LF ed.) (1884)
• introduction: A Plea for Liberty: An Argument against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation (LF ed.) (1891)
• introduction: A Plea for Liberty: An Argument against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation (1891 ed.) (1891)
• author: Political Institutions, being Part V of the Principles of Sociology (1876)
• author: The Principles of Ethics, 2 vols. (1897)
• author: The Principles of Ethics, vol. 1 (1897)
• author: The Principles of Ethics, vol. 2 (1897)
• author: The Principles of Psychology (1855)
• author: Social Statics (1851)
• author: The Study of Sociology (1873)