Principes de la Théorie des Richesses.

Paris, L. Hachette, 1863. (4), iv, 527, (1) pp. Large 8vo. Contemporary cloth-backed marbled boards, with label with gilt lettering, small loss of paper on rear cover. Einaudi 1364; Mattioli 794; New Palgrave, i, p. 708; Schumpeter p. 958. First edition, a reformulation in non-mathematical terms of his ideas exposed earlier in his seminal but at the time almost completely ignored Recherches sur les Principes Mathématiques de la Théorie des Richesses. Cournot was the first 'to visualize the general interdependence of all economic quantities and the necessity of representing this cosmos by a system of equations' (Schumpeter, p. 467). Cournot's first attempt to apply mathematics to the treatment of economic questions, his Recherches sur les Principes Mathématiques de la Théorie des Richesses, published in 1838, did not meet with much understanding due to the fact that the work contained many technicalities to which economists had been previously unaccustomed. The book therefore went almost unnoticed until its significance was recognized by Jevons, Walras and Marshall. In the Recherches Cournot treated only questions where mathematical analysis was applicable and therefore the product was not a complete treatise on political economy but a selection of contributions to various specific topics. In the present work the results are united thus stating his theory without the mathematics and developped into a systematic doctrine. - Neatly cancelled library stamp on half-title, tear in one blank corner of a leaf neatly repaired. Printed on good quality paper.