Essays in Biography

2012 Reprint of 1933 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Most of the essays in this book were first collected and published in 1933, when Keynes had reached a turning point in what had by then become a highly successful career as an academic economist, as an official economic adviser, opponent of the reparations imposed on Germany, and critic of the orthodox economic policies of British governments. Before devoting himself fully to the final stages of his journey towards the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Keynes put together these examples of one of his favorite literary genres, the psychological portrait and biographical sketch. the book now contains almost all of Keynes’s biographical writings: his savage portraits of the architects of the treaty of Versailles and sketches of other politicians, including Trotsky, Montagu, Lloyd George, Balfour, Bonar Law, and Churchill; some classic accounts of the lives of economists, including Malthus, Jevons, Marshall, Edgeworth and Ramsey.