Bentham, Jeremy

ben'tam, Jeremy (1748-1832), a distinguished English writer. He was a native of London. Bentham may be associated in mind with Mill, Carlyle, Ruskin, and a host of other writers who insisted that English laws and English society did injustice to the great mass of the people. His house stood at the back end of an alley and faced inward on a little garden, "like an oasis in the desert." He desired privacy in order to busy himself with his studies, but his house was always open to his friends. It was quite a resort for thinking people. In 1823 he founded the Westminster Review, a periodical which had much influence on the legislation of Great Britain. A nephew, George Bentham, was a frequenter of the Kew Gardens and united with Sir Joseph Hooker in the preparation of Genera Plantarum, or genera of plants, the greatest descriptive botany ever written. See Mill