The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes, 1919 Part V: Standing Room Only! by Sue Woods

“Intolerable anguish and fury” [1] had compelled Keynes to leave Paris and resign his position as financial representative of the Treasury at the Paris Peace Conference.  Jan Christian Smuts had already suggested to Keynes that he should “set about writing a clear connected account of what the financial and economic clauses of the Treaty actually are and mean and what their probable results will be.  It should not be too long, as we may want to appeal to the plain man more than to the well informed or the specialist.” [1] Keynes replied that “ he could do at any time, and speedily, what Smuts proposed, for he had it clear in his mind and it only needed putting on paper.” [1]. This account of the origin of the book is identified by Austin Robinson in his obituary to Keynes which appeared in the Economic Journal, March 1947. 

Duncan Grant with John Maynard Keynes in 1914 © Public Domain

On his return to Cambridge in July, Keynes did indeed start to write The Economic Consequences of the Peace”.  He wrote to Duncan Grant from King’s on 17 July,

“Most of the day, I think about my book, and write it for about two hours, so that I get on fairly well and am now nearly half way through the third chapter of eight. … But writing is very difficult, and I feel more and more admiration for those who can bring it off successfully.  I’ve finished to-day a sketch of the appearance and character of Clemenceau, and am starting to-morrow on Wilson.  I think it’s worthwhile to try, but it’s really beyond my powers.”[2]

Keynes left Cambridge for London on 24 July, and at the beginning of August resumed writing the book from Charleston. He wrote every morning from breakfast until lunch and by mid-August was making fast progress.

In a letter to his mother on 3 September, he wrote that he had ‘managed to keep up my average of 1,000 words fit for the printer every day, seven days a week; but there are still some very difficult bits to do.  I hope to finish by the first week of October and have it actually published before the last day of the month.’ [2]

During the Michaelmas term of 1919, Keynes delivered a course of lectures in Cambridge entitled “Economic Aspects of the Peace Treaty”.  Austin Robinson writes in his obituary to Keynes: “My principal memory of them is of the dense throng and the fight to find even standing room, for everyone was prepared to cut anything to hear Keynes; I was then a classic, and was duly reprimanded by my tutor for surprising lacunae in my knowledge of Cicero’s Letters.  But almost equally vivid is my memory of the burning sense of the world’s stupidities which animated the lecturer.  Those lectures appeared in a variant form at the end of December 1919 as The Economic Consequences of the Peace, and the world shared our excitement.”

 [1]         Millin, Sarah Gertrude.  General Smuts.  London: Faber and Faber, 1936

[2]          Skidelsky, Robert. John Maynard Keynes. Volume 1. London: Macmillan, 1983

The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes, 1919 Part I: Early Publication History by Catherine Piner

In anticipation of the Economic Consequences of the Peace Centenary Conference on September 9th and 10th, 2019, the Marshall Library is releasing a series of blog posts on the publication of Keynes’ book. The first in this series focuses on the early publication history of The Economic Consequences of the Peace.

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The first print run of The Economic Consequences of the Peace hit London at the end of 1919.

 

Within six weeks Keynes was working with American publisher Alfred Harcourt of Harcourt, Brace and Howe Inc. on an American edition. In a letter from Keynes to Harcourt on the 29th of January 1920, Keynes explains the unanticipated enormity of the response to his work. By this point, 8,000 copies had been sold in England and 15,000 had been printed in all. Internationally, there was a ‘strong demand’ for the translation rights in ‘French, Italian, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, and Russian.’^[1] Given the response to his work, Keynes was writing to express his regret at not making the first American print run larger than the planned 4,000 copies.

Keynes was certainly right about the American market. His royalty statements for the first six months of American publication reveal incredible success. By the 30th of June, 38,403 copies had been sold in America. In terms of royalties, Keynes earned $16,401.31.^[2] His publisher, Alfred Harcourt, clearly anticipated the continuation of this success; in a letter on May 5th, 1920 Harcourt informs Keynes that they just had another 50,000 printed with 4,000 bound initially.^[3]

While not as robust in terms of total copies as the publication’s American success, the work continued to do exceedingly well in England. Within weeks of the book’s publication, friends, organizations, and strangers were writing to Keynes asking him to publish a cheaper edition of the work. On January 16, 1920 the secretary of the Women’s International League, K.E. Royds, wrote to Keynes asking him to ‘arrange to have a cheap edition […] brought out at the earliest possible moment.’^[4] Thomas F. Tweed of the Manchester Liberal Federation wrote asking for a cheaper and shortened edition. On January 27, 1920 he wrote:

‘It is fair to assume that you wrote the book with a more or less propaganda purpose. Its price, however, makes the matter of popular circulation almost prohibitive, and I am instructed in this first instance, in quite an informal way, to suggest to you the writing of an abridged version of the “Economic Consequences” which might be about half its length and published at a popular price.’^[5]

Others, such as Archibald Rowntree, wrote offering to help finance a cheaper edition, saying that if ‘any help is needed by way of guarantee in order to get it at a really low price, I think two or three of us here would be only too glad to help in this way.’^[6] Harold Storey of the Liberal Publication Department similarly offered financial assistance should it be necessary, explaining that ‘Many of us regard your book as so much the mouthpiece of a great cause, that I do not think there would be any difficulty in spending money in order to get it quickly before a larger public.’^[7]

On the subject of a cheaper edition, Keynes eventually worked with G.D.H. Cole of the Labour Research Department to release a special cheaper edition of 10,000 copies. By September 1st of 1920, there remained only 170 copies of the 10,000 unsold.^[8] A photograph of the Marshall Library’s copy from this edition is below. The book is on display at the entrance of the Marshall Library for the next few months for those interested in a closer look.

Within a year of publication, the spread of Keynes’ work was so broad that he had to cancel plans for 2,000 copies of a Czech translated edition. At this time, the spread of the German edition throughout Czechoslovakia made it unprofitable to translate further.^[9] Clearly, neither Keynes nor his publishers predicted this work’s universal popularity.

It is important to keep in mind that these publication figures give just a glimmer of the work’s popularity; for every book sold it is impossible to say how many times it was read and passed between individuals. While the publication figures certainly tell a story of the work’s unanticipated popularity, the reasons for and nature of that popularity cannot been seen in these figures. Future blog posts will begin to address just this.

Special thanks to the Archive Centre and King’s College, Cambridge for use of and help with their collection of Keynes’ correspondence.

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^[1] Cambridge, King’s College Archive Centre, EC/5/1/29 & 30. 

^[2] EC/5/1/49 & 50 & 51.

^[3] EC/5/1/44.

^[4] EC/4/6 & 7.

^[5] EC/4/13 & 14.

^[6] EC/4/1.

^[7] EC/4/10 & 11.

^[8] EC/4/48.

^[9] EC/5/2/10.

Joan Robinson, a 'pioneering' Keynesian

Joan arrived as an undergraduate at Girton College, Cambridge, in 1922 to read for the Economics Tripos. She had studied history at school, but chose Economics for her degree, as she wanted to understand the causes of poverty and unemployment. She gained a 2:1 but was denied a degree, as this right was not granted to women at Cambridge until 1948. 

In 1926 just two months after her marriage to Austin Robinson, a fellow of Corpus Christi, Joan and Austin sailed to Bombay where Austin took up the post of tutor to the Maharajah of Gwalior.

 Together they led a privileged life, although Joan was not always comfortable at the society events where she was expected to generate small talk. Joan assisted Austin in the drafting  of a review of the relations between the Indian states and the British Crown and was invited to London for the presentation of the Princes' case. Meanwhile Austin resigned from his post as tutor and was reunited with Joan in London where they drafted considerable portions of a book on population. The drafts remained unpublished, as they then moved back to Cambridge where Austin took up a lectureship in 1929.

Joan had to wait until 1934 for her first university post as an assistant lecturer. Although she was not appointed as a teaching fellow, Joan gave supervisions to students from various colleges. At this time she came to know Cambridge economists, including Maynard Keynes, Piero Sraffa, Maurice Dobb,Gerald Shove, James Meade, Dennis Robertson, A.C.Pigou, and of course Richard Kahn, Keyne's favourite pupil and Joan's most trusted critic. Joan had an incisive mind, and she relished the intense discussions held with colleagues in the faculty. Joan joined a small group of scholars referred to as "The Circus", which was formed by Sraffa in 1930 to discuss A Treatise on Money by Keynes. With reference to the group Joan wrote, "Keynes, and all of us, thought that [it] was of great and serious importance to get the argument right; taking credit for it was quite a secondary matter." In 1962, in correspondence with Nicky Kaldor, Joan wrote,  I value very much the work gang and I think that we all do each othjer more good working as a team thatn any one can by having prioriy or "all my own unaided work".

Joan's first publication appeared in 1932 in the form of a pamphlet Economics is a Serious Subject, followed by her first major work The Economics of Imperfect Competition in 1933.

In 1937 she was appointed a lecturer, a reader in 1949 and a professor in 1965, succeeding Austin. Throughout her academic career she worked ferociously, writing books and journal articles, as well as reviews of articles, both favourable and critical. She wrote prolifically about the new ideas being developed by Keynese and contributed much to the debate of employment theory, and the theories of money and international trade. During the Second World War Joan researched Marx's Capital to assess the impact of his economic theory on orthodox economists and Keynesisans.

Much of Joan's writing in the post-war years concerned development issues. She was fascinated by the Chinese experiment, travelling there eight times, as in her opinion China demonstrated how to implement a planned economy, in both urban and rural communities. A theme which recurred in her later years was her vehement opposition to war and the arms industry. Her last public lecture was a criticism of the nuclear arms race: "...never before has so great a proportion of economic energy and scientific study been devoted to means of destruction."

As summarised by Paul Samuelson, Joan sought to find "true socialism", helping to promote justice and equality in many different societies she had encountered throughout her life. She was an original thinker, a passionate seeker after truth, and one of the greatest economists of the twentieth century.

Original research by Sue Woods.