Contemporary economist's copy. The first edition of Keynes' masterwork. Written in the aftermath of the great depression, The General Theory is regarded as one of the most influential social science treatises of the century; it quickly and permanently changed the way the world looked at the economy and the role of government in society. This is the book 'on which [Keynes'] fame as the outstanding economist of his generation must rest' (ODNB).

After the 1929 crash, Keynes analysed the classical school of economists, 'and found them seriously inadequate and inaccurate. [...] A national budget, over and above its function of providing a national income, should be used as a major instrument in planning the national economy. The regulation of the trade-cycle [...] must be the responsibility of governments. Lost equilibrium in a national economy could and should be restored by official action and not abandoned to laisser (sic) faire. [The General Theory] threw the economists of the world into two violently opposed camps. Yet eight years later Keynes was to dominate the international conference at Bretton Woods, out of which came the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank; and his influence during the ensuing decades, even on his theoretical opponents, has been such that a highly placed American official recently remarked that 'we are all Keynesians today' (PMM).

With provenance for the Italian economist Giovanni (Jo) Maggio, a classmate of Sir Eric Wyndham White at the London School of Economics in the 1930s, and colleague of his at the Secretariat of GATT (now the World Trade Organisation) during the early rounds of negotiations.

First edition, first impression; 8vo (22 x 14.5 cm); ownership inscription in pencil to front free endpaper recto; publisher's blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt, spine ends slightly creased, spine a little spotted, free endpapers slightly browned with light crease to front free endpaper, otherwise very good; [2], xii, 403, [1]pp.

PMM 423.