Half a century after the 18th-century political philosophers Mary Wollstonecraft

and William Godwin pioneered the marriage of equals, and just as Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Margaret Fuller were contorting themselves around the parameters of
true partnership, another historic power couple modeled for the world the pinnacle
of an intimate union that is also an intellectual, creative, and moral partnership
nourishing not only to the couple themselves but profoundly influential to their
culture, their era, and the moral and political development of the world itself.

In 1851, after a twenty-one-year bond traversing friendship, collaboration,

romance, and shared idealism, John Stuart Mill (May 20, 1806�May 8, 1873) and
Harriet Taylor (October 8, 1807�November 3, 1858) were married. Mill would come to
celebrate Taylor, like Emerson did Fuller, as the most intelligent person he ever
knew and his greatest influence. In her titanic mind, he found both a mirror and a
whetstone for his own. They co-authored the first serious philosophical and
political case against domestic violence. Taylor�s ideas came to shape Mill�s
advocacy of women�s rights and the ideological tenor of his landmark book-length
essay On Liberty, composed with steady input from her, published shortly after her
untimely death, and dedicated lovingly to �the friend and wife whose exalted sense
of truth and right was my strongest incitement.�