A textually crisp, desirable first edition of the complete volume of reports of the 32nd annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The volume includes, in the often-lacking section on Statistical Science - William Stanley Jevons' two-page Notice of a General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy (pp.158-9).

A month prior to the 32nd meeting Jevons expressed some trepidation regarding the Association's reception of the Notice in a letter to his son Herbert:

"I have resolved however at last to let out my theory of Economy, & have accordingly written a short paper entitled Notice of a general mathematical theory of Economy which will I hope be read at the Brit. Assoc. meeting at the beginning of next month. Although I know pretty well the paper is worth perhaps all the others that will be read there put together, I cannot pretend to say how it will be received, whether it will be read at all, or whether it won't be considered nonsense" 14 September 1862, Papers and Correspondence of William Stanley Jevons II, p. 452.

The Notice was read in Jevons's absence to section F of the Association in October 1862 and, as predicted by its author, was met with considerable reservation; just one short abstract of it, the two-page section present in this volume, was published. Though it received a lukewarm reception at the time and remained largely ignored by academic circles, the Notice is now "renowned as the first statement of his new ideas in the area of value theory" (R. D. Collison Black in The New Palgrave).

In 1866 it was published, with minor changes, under the slightly amended title Brief Account of a General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy in the Royal Statistical Society Journal. This Report also includes a second paper by Jevons, On the Study of Periodic Commercial Fluctuations, present at pp. 157-8. 

This publication originally issued in a rather small, specialized imprint and consequently scarce on the market. Offered but once in the auction record and rare in the trade. 

The publisher's catalogue bound at the rear includes notices of items just released or in preparation, including The Antiquity of Man from Geological Evidences by Charles Lyell; The Naturalist on the River Amazons by H. W. Bates; History of the Races of the Old World by Charles L. Brace; The Taeping Rebellion by Linsdesay Brine; Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in the Kingdoms of Siam, Cambojia, and Lao by Henri Monot; etc.

[William Stanley Jevons]. Report of the Thirty-Second Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; Held at Cambridge in October 1862. London. John Murray. 1863. lxi + 527pp. + 243pp + 16pp [Catalogue, July, 1863].

Textually very good with occasional exposure between signatures, but stable. Both boards simple paper covered binders board and quite shaken, the front all but detached. Spine cover completely absent. All plates present and accounted for.