The Development of Marshall’s Thought

The first edition of Alfred Marshall’s Principles appeared in 1890, twenty-five years after he had successfully completed studies towards the Mathematical Tripos at St John’s College, Cambridge, and five years after he was elected to the Chair of Political Economy at Cambridge. Insights into this period of Marshall’s professional life are readily acquired from Maynard Keynes’ (1924) detailed memoir of Marshall,1 together with the selected writings and correspondence assembled in Pigou (1925) and the posthumously published recollections of his wife, Mary Paley Marshall (1947). These sources have been extended considerably through the substantial archival research and enquiry undertaken by Whitaker (1975a: 3–116) and Groenewegen (1995, 2007), along with subsequent compilations of Marshall’s unpublished writings, official papers and correspondence referred to in the previous chapter. Discussion in this chapter draws on this material in order to consider some of the more significant and enduring influences on Marshall’s thinking during the period leading up to the publication of the Principles. Marshall’s views on the nature and role of economic theory were to a significant extent the product of his journey from mathematics to economics, and the rather complex methodological foundations of his Principles cannot be fully appreciated without some reference to the body of knowledge and mode of thinking that evolved during Marshall’s formative years.