Helen Taylor (feminist)

Helen Taylor
Helen Taylor with John Stuart Mill
Born	(1831-07-31)31 July 1831 Kent Terrace, London
Died	29 January 1907(1907-01-29) (aged 75) Torquay
Nationality	British
Known for	Feminism

Helen Taylor (1831–1907) was an English feminist, writer and actress. She was the daughter of Harriet Taylor Mill and stepdaughter of John Stuart Mill. After the death of her mother, she lived and worked with John Stuart Mill. Together they promoted women's rights. From 1876 to 1884 (when she quit due to her health) she was a member of the London School Board. In 1881, she joined the Democratic Federation.

She was born at Kent Terrace, London, on 27 July 1831, was only daughter and youngest of three children of John Taylor, wholesale druggist of Mark Lane, and his wife Harriet, daughter of Thomas Hardy of Birksgate, near Kirkburton, Yorkshire, where the family had been lords of the manor for centuries. Taylor, a man of education, inspired his daughter with a lifelong love for history and strong filial affection from an early age. Helen's education was pursued desultorily and privately. She was the constant companion of her mother, who, owing to poor health, was continually travelling. Mrs. Taylor's letters to her daughter, shortly to be published, testify to deep sympathy between the two.

The father died in July 1849, and in April 1851 Helen's mother married John Stuart Mill.

Her mother, Harriet Taylor Mill, wanted Helen to be free to do "what she hoped all women would one day have the liberty to do: to work at a job of her own choosing. The "experiments in living" that Harriet and John Stuart Mill encouraged in On Liberty began with her own daughter, Helen.

Helen followed her dream of becoming an actress and went to work at Sunderland in 1856 and worked as an actress for two years.

Mrs. Mill died on 3 November 1858 at the Hotel de l'Europe, Avignon, when on the way with her husband to the south of France. In order to be near his wife's grave Mill bought a house at Avignon, which subsequently passed to Miss Taylor. Miss Taylor now devoted herself entirely to Mill, and became his 'chief comfort.' She not only took entire charge of practical matters and of his heavy correspondence, answering many of his letters herself, but also may have co-operated in his literary work, especially in The Subjection of Women (1869), much of which might have been suggested by her mother. Mill used to say of all his later work that it was the result not of one intelligence, but of three, of himself, his wife, and his step-daughter. Mill died in 1873.