Frightening the ‘Landed Fogies’: Parliamentary Politics and The Coal Question*: Michael V. White

Utilitas 3 (2):289-302 (1991)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In early 1864, disappointed by the response to his previous work, the young Manchester academic W. Stanley Jevons announced that he was undertaking a study of the so-called coal question: ‘A good publication on the subject would draw a good deal of attention … it is necessary for the present at any rate to write on popular subjects’. When Jevons's The Coal Question was published in April 1865, however, it received comparatively little attention and sales were slow. Jevons and his publisher, Alexander Macmillan, then began sending complimentary copies to luminaries such as Sir John Herschel and Alfred Tennyson. In February 1866 the marketing campaign produced its first substantial return. Macmillan had sent CQ to William Gladstone who responded with letters to both Macmillan and Jevons, noting that the book had strengthened his ‘conviction’ on the necessity for reducing the National Debt. In April, John Stuart Mill praised CQ in the House of Commons, calling for action on the Debt and, three weeks later, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gladstone introduced the budget using half his speech to examine the Debt situation and referring to CQ in support for a proposed measure of Debt reduction. With the extensive publicity given to CQ following Mill's speech and the budget, Jevons had achieved his objective in writing the text which went into a second edition in 1866. On the face of it, CQ 's success was due to its effect of introducing a change in budget policy and this is the impression given by some accounts of the episode.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Philosophy: What is It?F. B. Jevons - 1914 - New York,: Cambridge University Press.
Personality.F. B. Jevons - 1913 - New York,: Routledge.
Personality.F. B. Jevons - 1913 - New York,: Routledge.
Jevons: Critical Responses.Sandra Peart (ed.) - 2002 - Routledge.

Analytics

Added to PP
2010-08-30

Downloads
70 (#211,377)

6 months
3 (#439,232)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

Mechanical rationality: Jevons and the making of economic man.Harro Maas - 1999 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 30 (4):587-619.
Mechanical Rationality: Jevons and the Making of Economic Man.Harro Maas - 1999 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 30 (4):587-619.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Add more references