On Sraffa’s Library

Marguerite Yourcenar famously wrote that ‘One of the best ways to reconstruct a man’s thinking is to rebuild his library’. Yet, the case of the reconstruction of Sraffa’s library is I believe different, and more complex than Yourcenar’s sentence implies. While starting to think about what I would say today, I asked myself what I thought I would be doing by putting together the catalogue of Sraffa’s library, when back in 1992 in conversation with John Eatwell he suggested I take on this job. This was at the end of a year in Cambridge during which I had been a Visiting Fellow at Trinity College. The year was a happy one, but for the fact that my efforts to have access to Sraffa’s archive had been consistently frustrated. Work on the catalogue I certainly saw as a way of insinuating myself into the archive. The books were not banned territory, and with them came a big box of unsorted papers which also had escaped the Interdict, and which were made available to me by Trinity. A perusal of this box revealed some little treasures

Economics · Mathematical economics · Neoclassical economics · Historical and Literary Analyses · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Art and Culture Studies

• Classical Economics and the Question of Aggregate Demand

  ALEX M THOMAS•Review of Political Economy•2023

  Add to list