May 05, 2022 - Sale 2603

Sale 2603 - Lot 23

Price Realized: $ 406
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
[Economics] Keynes, John Maynard (1883-1946)
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.

New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1936.

First American edition, octavo, bound in publisher's blue cloth, spine titled in gilt, lacking the dust jacket, some loss of lettering on spine, slightly rubbed, 8 1/2 x 5 1/4 in.

The economic turmoil of the Great Depression prompted many to question the wisdom of allowing an unregulated free market to self-correct. Keynes suggested that a cash-starved economy would continue to perpetuate the downward slide. His sustained criticism of existing economic theory carried great influence. "I believe myself to be writing a book on economic theory which will largely revolutionize-- not I suppose, at once but in the course of the next ten years --the way the world thinks about its economic problems. I can't expect [...] anyone to believe this at the present stage. But for myself I don't merely hope what I say, in my own mind, I'm quite sure. (see John Cassidy's "The Demand Doctor," The New Yorker, 3 October 2011, quoting a letter Keynes wrote to George Bernard Shaw on 1 January 1935, referring to the present work.)