"In some parts rather rough": A Recently Discovered Manuscript Version of William Stanley Jevons's "General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy" (1862)

I have had a good deal of disappointment in the last six months.

—William Stanley Jevons, journal, 21 December 1862

In short, I do not write for mathematicians, nor as a mathematician, but as an economist wishing to convince other economists that their science can only be satisfactorily treated on an explicitly mathematical basis.

—Jevons, preface to The Theory of Political Economy, 2d ed. (1879)

The progress of William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) in mathematizing economics is a striking story of success following an unpromising start. Graduated in 1861 from the University of London with an M.A. and gold medal in topics including logic and political economy, and holding a special scholarship at University College London, he had been cogitating for some years both on possible general theories and on statistical representations of data; and he went public in 1862 with two papers sent to Section F (“Economic Science and Statistics”) of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), which held its annual meeting at Cambridge at the beginning of October. One paper gave a “notice of a general mathematical theory of political economy,” and the other treated “periodic commercial fluctuations.” Summaries of both papers appeared in the Report of the BAAS (Jevons 1863a, 1863b), but the first paper did not receive Section approval. He published the full version of it four years later with the Statistical Society of London, with the title now starting “Brief Account of” (Jevons 1866); placed in a section of the journal called “Miscellanea,” it generated little response.

Undeterred by his rejection by Section F, and not content with only the 1866 publication, Jevons persevered with his vision, especially when the electrical engineer Fleeming Jenkin (1833–1885) independently published principles similar to his own in 1868 (Cookson and Hempstead 2000, 157–64). Jevons wrote “a small work on Political Economy,” although “far from being a popular book” as he confessed on 28 March 1871 when alerting his publisher Macmillan to its existence for the first time. Nevertheless, he hoped that it would be “published without delay”;¹ and this duly happened later in the year as The Theory of Political Economy (Jevons 1871; hereafter TPE). By March 1878 it was nearly sold out; so Jevons proposed a revised second edition, which he eventually finished the next January and prefaced and proofread by May (Jevons 1879).² Two posthumous editions appeared under the care of widow Harriet (1888) and son Herbert (1911). With this book and other work, Jevons's reputation as a general theorist in economics was established.

This intellectual rags-to-riches story is well known; but its start has an addendum, and it concerns the “Notice” paper that Jevons had submitted to the BAAS. The BAAS had met from 1 to 7 October 1862 (and actually ran on to 8 October); Jevons, apparently not present, had sent from his home in Paddington (London) on 2 October another manuscript comprising the full version of the “Notice” paper to Philosophical Magazine, a leading scientific journal of the period. He had already published there on five previous occasions, on hygrometry and meteorology; but this time his paper did not appear. Presumably the editor, William Francis (1817–1904), rejected it (no rejection letter has survived, but I shall argue the case below); the only alternative is that Jevons withdrew the paper, although this seems most unlikely. It was not mislaid, for Francis placed it in the journal's files. In August 2000 I discovered it, together with Jevons's covering letter, in the archives of the publisher, Taylor and Francis, at St. Bride Printing Library, London.³ These are lucky conservations: for whatever reason(s) the company's archives now contain only a very small proportion of the...