“THE GREATEST ECONOMICS TREATISE OF HIS GENERATION”: FIRST EDITION OF MARSHALL’S PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMICS, 1890

MARSHALL, Alfred. Principles of Economics. London: Macmillan, 1890. Thick octavo, original green cloth rebacked with original spine laid down. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $16,500.

First edition of this foundational work on economics. Only Volume I (as here) was ever published, scarce in contemporary cloth.

The founder of "diagrammatic economics" and the first to introduce simple graphs as a tool for explaining concepts such as the laws of supply and demand, Alfred Marshall was arguably the most important economist of the 19th century. However, although Marshall was known for sharing his ideas in lectures and in conversations and although the influence of those ideas could be observed in the work of pupils and contemporaries, "no part of his work was published in any adequate form until the appearance of his Principles of Economics in 1890… When at length it saw the light, his Principles of Economics was readily accepted as the greatest economics treatise of his generation; and for more than 30 years most serious work on the subject was built on his foundations. By the end of 1928 some 40,000 copies of the book had been sold in English, it had been translated into many languages, and its influence had penetrated to all schools of economic thought in every part of the world" (DNB). By Marshall's death, his students occupied over half of the economic chairs in the U.K. and he was considered to be the father of economics in England. "More than anyone else, Marshall helped make economics a field of study in its own right" (Pressman, 64). With 60 page publisher's catalogue dated 10/2/90 bound in at rear. Owner signature in pencil on half title.

Only very minor wear to cloth extremities. A beautiful copy, most unusual in this condition.