Description: Once the home of Herbert Spencer. Spencer was born in Derby on 27 April 1820, the eldest of nine children, but the only one to survive infancy. He was the product of an undisciplined, largely informal education. His father, George, was a school teacher, but an unconventional man, and Spencer's family were Methodist 'Dissenters,' with Quaker sympathies. From an early age, Herbert was strongly influenced by the individualism and the anti-establishment and anti-clerical views of his father, and the Benthamite radical views of his uncle Thomas. Indeed, Spencer's early years showed a good deal of resistance to authority and independence. A person of eclectic interests, Spencer eventually trained as a civil engineer for railways but, in his early 20s, turned to journalism and political writing. He was initially an advocate of many of the causes of philosophic radicalism and some of his ideas (e.g., the definition of 'good' and 'bad' in terms of their pleasurable or painful consequences, and his adoption of a version of the 'greatest happiness principle') show similarities to utilitarianism. His major works were: Principles of Biology (1864 - 1867), Principles of Psychology (1870 - 1872), Principles of Sociology (1876 - 1896), Principles of Ethics (1892 - 1893). Spencer is a bit better known today for having developed principles of evolutionary biology before Darwin - indeed, the popular phrase 'survival of the fittest,' now so associated with Darwinian evolution, is actually a creation of Spencer's. He died on December 8, 1903 in Brighton.