Notes on Malthus

Item No. 3.

1989

Patricia James (1917-1987) was a historian and biographer of Thomas Robert Malthus. In 1966, Cambridge University Press published her edition of Malthus’ Travel Diaries. James brought together a wide range of original material to write the first complete biography of Malthus, which appeared 1979 with Routledge. Population Malthus: His Life and Times reflects her expertise on the life and writings of Malthus. James held high standards of accuracy and knew the archives very well, what is reflected in the posthumously published two-volume variorum edition of An Essay on the Principle of Population (Cambridge University Press for the Royal Economic Society, 1990). Identifying the sources which Malthus used to write his Essay on the Principle of Population was a laborious task since Malthus considerably transformed each edition between its first publication in 1798 and its last in 1826. The manuscript presented below is part of the notes that Patricia James made when editing her variorum edition of the Essay on Population, notes which can be found in the Intellectual History Archive. She not only identified author and work cited by Malthus but also made extensive notes on the life and content, as illustrated by the case of Richard Price’s Observations on Reversionary Payment.