“ONE OF THE THREE OR FOUR LEADING ECONOMIC THEORISTS OF ALL TIME”

MARSHALL, Alfred. Industry and Trade. London: Macmillan, 1919. Thick octavo, original blue-green cloth. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $850.

First edition of Marshall’s long-awaited successor to Principles of Economics (1890), published only five years before his death in 1924, a highly influential work on business and industrial organization praised on publication as “a very remarkable achievement,” scarce in original cloth.

Alfred Marshall is "one of the three or four leading economic theorists of all time" (Diamond, Reader's guide to the History of Science, 437). A major influence on John Maynard Keynes, Marshall is especially "famous for his contributions to microeconomics" and for developing "tools of supply and demand analysis… More than anyone else, Marshall helped make economics a field of study in its own right" (Pressman, 64-8). In 1894 Marshall began work on Industry and Trade, the much-anticipated successor to his groundbreaking Principles of Economics (1890), and spent nearly 30 years producing this work that is widely held as "innovative and path-breaking" in its study of industrial organization (Atlantic Economic Journal). On publication in 1919, Industry and Trade won immediate praise as "the fullest, most exact, and most effective presentment of modern business organizations and operations… a very remarkable achievement of intellectual skill and industry" (Manchester Guardian). By the time of his death in 1924, Marshall's students occupied over half of the economic chairs in England and he was considered the nation's father of economics. Prize bookplate. Bookseller ticket.

Interior fine; minor rubbing, light toning to spine of original cloth. Very scarce.