Principles of Economics: A Fragment of a Treatise on the Industrial Mechanism of Society and Other Papers. With a Preface by Henry Higgs.

London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1905. First edition. Octavo (8 5/8 x 5 1/2 inches; 219 x 140 mm). xxviii, [1]-273, [1, blank], [2, publisher's advertisements] pp.

Publisher's full brick cloth. Boards ruled in blind. Spine lettered and ruled in gilt. Partially unopened. Previous owner's name twice on front free endpaper, and once of title-page, not affecting text. Another previous owner's signature has been extracted from the front free endpaper, leaving a 2 1/2 -inch hole. Corner's a bit bumped. Spine slightly darkened with gilt a bit rubbed. Some light foxing to endpapers. Overall a very good copy.

William Stanley Jevons, (1835-1882), was a British economist and philosopher of science. "He planned a Principles of Economics to supplement his Theory of Political Economy; significantly, he gave it the subtitle ‘A treatise on the industrial mechanism of society'. By 1882 he had sketched out its contents and drafted a number of chapters, but was still preoccupied with the completion of papers more urgently required—such as one for that year's social science congress, on the employment of married women in factories—and still trying to do more than his weakened health would allow... On 13 August he unwisely decided to go swimming, apparently suffered a heart attack brought on by the shock of the unusually cold sea, and drowned. He was buried five days later in Hampstead cemetery... It was left to his widow and his friends to collect the published and unpublished papers Jevons had left behind and to issue them in a series of volumes: Methods of Social Reform (1883), Investigations in Currency and Finance (1884), Pure Logic and other Minor Works (1890), and The Principles of Economics (1905)." (Dictionary of National Biography)

Einaudi. Goldsmiths'. Kress.

HBS 65799.

$750.