FINE COPY OF WALRAS'S CLASSIC DEVELOPMENT OF MARGINAL UTILITY. WALRAS, LÉON. Élém...

FINE COPY OF WALRAS'S CLASSIC DEVELOPMENT OF MARGINAL UTILITY. WALRAS, LÉON. Éléments d'économie politique pure. Lausanne: L. Corbaz, Paris: Guillaumin, Basel: H. Georg, 1874-1877. 2 parts, complete. 8vo (210 x 132 mm). Half-title, 3 folding engraved plates. Contemporary half-morocco over pebbled cloth, blind-stamped 'WK' at the base of the spine, marbled endpapers. Custom cloth folding case. Provenance: Hon. Stanley C. Wisniewski (pencil inscription) in both volumes of this lot. A PARTICULARLY FINE, FRESH, COMPLETE COPY OF WALRAS'S MOST IMPORTANT WORK. Independently of, and three years after, Menger and Jevons, Walras developed his father's (and Cournot's) concept of rareté into a general theory of marginal utility. However, Walras alone expanded his theory to account for production, allowing him to derive his mathematical method for depicting general equilibrium throughout the economy. 'Walras is in my opinion the greatest of all economists. His system of economic equilibrium, uniting, as it does, the quality of a 'revolutionary' creativeness with the quality of classic synthesis, is the only work by an economist that will stand comparison with the achievements of theoretical physics. Compared with it, most of the theoretical writings of that period - and beyond - however valuable in themselves and however original subjectively, look like boats beside a liner, like inadequate attempts to catch some particular aspects of Walrasian truth' (Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, p 827). WITH: Elements of Pure Economics: Or the Theory of Social Wealth. Homewood, Illinois: Richard D. Irwin, 1954. 8vo. Publisher's blue cloth, original dust jacket. Provenance: Helen Stone (stamp to endpaper). A CLEAN BRIGHT COPY IN JACKET OF THE FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing