First edition. 8vo. xv, [1], 369, [3] pp. Original dark blue cloth, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, ruling continued to boards in blind, dust jacket (just a hint of faint spotting to top edge, offsetting to endpapers, near contemporary ownership inscription to front free endpaper obscuring an earlier ownership inscription below, otherwise generally internally clean; the cloth shows some light wear to head of spine and corners; the rare and fragile jacket has benefitted from some professional restoration to spine panel and along the folds, notwithstanding a very good copy indeed). London, Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1923.
The last of Marshall’s works to be published during his lifetime, the third of a projected four-volume series committed to a complete exegesis of ‘the direction of man’s efforts for the attainment of material ends: and to search for possibilities of improvements’, the first and second volumes being his Principles of Economics (1890) and Industry and Trade (1919). The projected fourth volume, entitled Progress - its Economic Conditions, would never materialise due to Marshall’s death in 1924.
