Works and correspondence of David Ricards/by David Ricardo; edited by Piero Sraffa and M.H. Dobb

Volume x Biographical miscellany

This volume, without pretensions to be a complete bio graphy, is composed of materials which bear upon Ricardo's life and character. It opens with a Memoir written by one of his brothers and to this has been attached, under the title of Addenda, some new information that has come to light about the patriarchal family into which he was born and about his youth and education until the final breach with his parents. There follow chapters on his business activity as a stock jobber and loan-contractor, and on how he invested the fortune which he had made. Finally, a series of letters of a domestic character show Ricardo in a variety of moods and circumstances. The whole forms a sort of scrap-book illus trating those aspects and periods of his life which are not represented in the previous volumes.

While the selection of private letters has none of the unity of the economic correspondence, it can be claimed that the selecting was largely done by Ricardo himself, in that they cover all the occasions on which he saw fit to keep, besides his correspondent's letters, also a copy of his own. Of the other private letters which have been included, those to his brother-in-law J. H. Wilkinson are notable for antedating by fifteen years any letters of Ricardo that have hitherto been, known. The Journal of a Tour on the Continent in 1822, which had previously been printed only for private circula tion and with excisions, is now published in full.