John Stuart Mill died in 1873, leaving his estate to his stepdaughter Helen Taylor. She died in 1907, and their papers passed to her niece, Mary Taylor. On her death the National Provincial Bank became the sole executor of her estate and, in due course, the papers were sold at auction. The papers were sold in two lots, the first in 1922 and the second in 1927. The first lot of papers sold were bought by Messrs Maggs who resold them to the firm of Trout, from whom the British Library of Political and Economic Science bought them in 1926. Of the rest of the material, nearly 270 letters, mainly between Mill's wife Harriet and her daughter Helen Taylor, came into the possession of Lord Keynes; the remainder seem to have been dispersed. A fuller account of this purchase and of the events that led up to it are given in the Bulletin of the British Library of Political and Economic Science, November 1926, and the preface to the Bibliography of the Published Writing of John Stuart Mill, published 1945. Since 1926, the original purchase has been augmented to form the collection as it now stands. In addition to the many small groups of letters and single letters that have been added there were three substantial additions. In 1943, the National Provincial Bank presented a miscellaneous collection of letters, documents and photographs which had remained in its custody. Also in 1943, Miss Philippa Fawcett presented 41 letters written by Mill to her father, Henry Fawcett. On the death of Lord Keynes, the letters in his possession passed to Kings College Cambridge, and in 1947 the Provost and Fellows of the College, in accordance with his known intentions, generously presented them to the library in order that they might be added to this collection. http://archives.lse.ac.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=MILL-TAYLOR

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