Profile Major Works Resources

Edwin Cannan, 1861-1935.

Portrait of E.Cannan

Born in Madeira, Edwin Cannan was the son of a wealthy English businessman.  He was educated at Clifton and Balliol College, Oxford.  As he was independently wealthy, there was no great pressure for him to pursue a clear career, and so he spent much time traveling or leisurely immersed in intellectual activities and political debates. Cannan's initial interest was in the relationship between economic theory and socialist thought (e.g. 1887, 1888), which he did not believe were incompatible with each other.  Cannan's activities in this realm placed him in touch with the Fabian society.  

However, Cannan quickly careened off in a completely different direction and became entranced by the promise of the new "Marginalist Revolution" breaking out in the wake of Alfred Marshall's Principles.  Indeed, in 1891, Cannan commuted from Oxford to attend Marshall's lectures at Cambridge.  However, Cannan was never a convinced "Marshallian", keeping some of their contribution (esp. consumer's surplus) at arm's length.

In 1893, after three years of intensive research, Cannan produced his most famous book, A History of the Theories of Production and Distribution in 1893.  With remarkable scholarship, Cannan logically dissected and destroyed the principal tenets of Classical Ricardian theory -- concluding that there was nothing there worth saving.  Although Cannan never regretted taking Ricardo and Mill down a few pegs, he made up for his mistreatment of Adam Smith later on.  In 1895, as luck would have it, Cannan came across a series of lecture notes taken down by a student of Smith's at Glasgow in 1763, which he subsequently edited and published as the Lectures on Jurisprudence.   In 1904, Cannan brought out what was long regarded as the authoritative edition of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.

In 1895, perhaps unaware of his new faith, Cannan's Fabian socialist friends invited him to join their new institution, the London School of Economics.  Cannan would teach at the LSE for the remainder of his life (although, stubbornly rooted to his residence in Oxford, he never actually moved to London).  In 1907, Cannan became the chair of the department and he used this position to shepherd the LSE away from its Fabian roots and into a tentative Marshallianism.  His Wealth (1914) presented a watered-down Marshallian economics in a pedagogic style that made it much more accessible to the layman than Marshall's own text.  

Cannan retired from the LSE in 1926, handing over the reins of the department to his successor, the American economst Allyn Young.  He used his retirement to prepare his latter-day lecture notes for publication.  The result was his magnificent Review of Economic Doctrines (1927).  Cannan's imprint on the LSE would not last for very long -- for, upon Young's death in 1929, Cannan's own protege,  Lionel Robbins, became chair and took the LSE in a very different direction..

 

  

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Major Works of Edwin Cannan

  • Communism in Relation to Production, 1887 (unpubl.)
  • Elementary Political Economy, 1888. [bk] [1897 2nd ed.; 1903 3rd ed]
  • "The Origin of the Law of Diminishing Returns, 1813-15", 1892, EJ [McM]
  • "The Malthusian Anti-Socialist Argument", 1892, Econ Review, p.71
  • A History of the Theories of Production and Distribution in English Political Economy from 1776 to 1848., 1894. [bk, av] [1903 2nd ed., av; 1917 3rd ed, av] [French 1910 transl, av]
  • "Ricardo in Parliament", 1894, EJ  [McM]
  • "The Probable Cessation of Growth of Population in England and Wales", 1895, EJ
  • "The Stigma of Pauperism", 1895, Econ Rev, p.380
  • "Preface and Introduction" to Adam Smith's Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms, delivered at Glasgow in 1763, 1896
  • History of the Local Rates in England: Five lectures, 1896 [bk] , [av]
  • "Preface and Introduction" , 1904. in Cannan, ed, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. [Lib]
  • "Division of Income", 1905, QJE
  • "Investments", 1908 in The Management of Private Affairs, [Ch. 4]
  • The Economic Outlook, 1912. [av]
  • Wealth: A brief explanation of the causes of economic welfare, 1914. [av], [mis]
  • Money: Its connexion with rising and falling prices, 1918.  [av], [mis]
  • The Paper Pound of 1797-1821: A reprint of the bullion report. 1919 [av], [1925 2nd ed.]
  • "Early History of the term 'Capital'", 1921, QJE [McM]
  • "An Application of the Theoretical Apparatus of Supply and Demand to Units of Currency", 1921, EJ
  • "Monetary Reform", with J.M. Keynes, Addis and Milner, 1924, EJ
  • An Economist's Protest, 1927.
  • A Review of Economic Theory, 1929
HET

 
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Resources on Edwin Cannan

 

 
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