New OLL Titles for 2013-14

Our plan is to expand our collection of books on 19th Century British Classical Liberal thought, especially works by the Philosophic Radicals and the Free Traders who contributed to The Economist magazine. Both groups were crucial in the development of classical liberal political and economic theory in the first half of the 19th century and both groups could claim that their ideas were instrumental in bringing about liberal reforms: the Philosophic Radicals were behind the political reforms which lead to the First Reform Act of 1832 which expanded the right to vote to the middle class for the first time, and the Free Traders were behind the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 which began a 70 year period of free trade in Britain.

The OLL already has works by Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, and Richard Cobden, but this is not complete (for example James Mill’s political writings are not well represented) and there are other important figures whose work is not represented at all (William Cobbett, John Thelwall, John Wade, John Roebuck, and George Grote). It is alsoplanned that a representative sample of essays and reviews published in the leading free trade magazine of the period, The Economist, be added. The focus will be on the period of agitation for the repeal of the Corn Laws (1846), its implementation (1846-49), and aftermath when Thomas Hodgskin and Herbert Spencer worked for the magazine under the editorship of James Wilson (1844-57).

These titles will enrich the OLL collection by adding significant works which lay behind the important liberal political, legal, and economic reforms which made the 19th century the heyday of classical liberalism.