A Soaring Eagle: Alfred Marshall. 1842-1924.

• Author: Stanfield, James Ronald

Peter Groenewegen's biography of Marshall arrives with substantial advance praise and promise to fulfill a surprising lacuna in the history of economic thought. Groenewegen delivers in fine style with a literally encyclopedic volume. About one-sixth of the book reviews Marshall's childhood and education. Marshall undertook economics in the service of a social conscience that led him to want to master the principles of the subject matter to which so many appealed in their pessimism about the plight of the less fortunate. This search for the path of social improvement seems rather common in the Victorian age and is related at least in part to a crisis brought about by the perceived erosion of religious belief by the scientific principles of the day [pp. 113-18]. Marshall's insistence upon the historical and inductive grounding of economics reflects this emphasis on the social utility of economic analysis [p. 759].

Marshall's apprenticeship in economics in the critical years of 1867-1875 is given focused attention [ch. 6] because of its pivotal importance to the Marshall we know in economics. J.S. Mill's work is not surprisingly of great importance in Marshall's apprenticeship, but the works of Smith, Cournot, von Thunen, and other German economists were also important. Interestingly, and true to his Victorian soul, throughout his career, Marshall used summer travels to remedy quite specific deficiencies he perceived in his intellectual development [ch. 7].

Marshall's long marriage to Mary Paley Marshall was by outward appearances quite successful, if very unusual for the times. Mary Paley pursued her own career in academic economics, and yet there is a lingering suspicion that her lot was not altogether a happy one in the marriage [p. 225], especially given Marshall's mixed views on the issue of women's education and his conviction that women were intellectually inferior to men [pp. 247-49, 258 and ch. 14]. However that, it is safe to conclude that the marriage was not one of an interactive intellectual partnership; Mary Paley seems to have been very deferential to her husband on intellectual topics [p. 257].

The details on Marshall's work are somewhat scattered, not surprising since the book is not an intellectual portrait but a story of a life. Moreover, the copious detail of the book is such that only the highly specialized scholar is likely to have occasion to read it through. For others, the book is likely to be put to encyclopedic use...