Jevons’s principal contribution to economics, outlining his marginal utility theory of value. The Theory of Political Economy constituted a decisive break with the classical theory of value of the ‘Ricardo–Mill school’, offering “in its place the challenging view that ‘value depends entirely upon utility’, asserting boldly that ‘Economy, if it is to be a science at all must be a mathematical science’” (ODNB). Described by Schumpeter as “one of the most genuinely original economists who ever lived”, The Theory of Political Economy, along with the “almost simultaneously published treatises of Menger and Walras, must be considered as opening up a new period in economic theorising, marking what was later to called the ‘marginal revolution’” (Blaug).
While he made no fundamental changes for the second edition, Jevons revised the book thoroughly and discussed criticisms of it in a new preface, in which he announced his discovery of Gossen.
This posthumous third edition adds to the appendix containing the bibliographic list of mathematico-economic books and a preface by his, the author’s, wife, Harriet A. Jevons.
Provenance: a Peel family copy, with the engraved armorial bookplate of Sir Mervyn Lloyd Peel (1856-1929), Conservative politician who held the offices of Deputy Lieutenant and Justice of the Peace.
Einaudi, 3070; Inoue & White, Bibliography of published works by W. S. Jevons, 118.
