The Book, Cat, & Cat Book Lovers Almanac

of historical trivia regarding books, cats, and other animals. Actually this blog has evolved so that it is described better as a blog about cats in history and culture. And we take as a theme the advice of Aldous Huxley: If you want to be a writer, get some cats. Don't forget to see the archived articles linked at the bottom of the page.

August 17, 2013

August 17, 1877

They married on August 17, 1877. He was Alfred Marshall, (July 26, 1842 to July 13, 1924) , a Cambridge mathematician. She was Mary Paley (1850-1944),  daughter of the Revd Thomas Paley, rector of Ufford....and great-granddaughter of Archdeacon William Paley.
Here is more information from his ODNB article:

For four years (1873-6) Marshall funded a prize for the best essay submitted by a woman moral sciences examinee on a socio-economic topic of his choice. Impressed by the intellectual abilities of two of his women students at Cambridge, including his future wife, Mary Paley, he suggested that they should try the moral sciences tripos and then coached them in political economy....
Alfred Marshall's mother died in 1878, and he became more conservative on women's issues, and by the 1880s, he was arguing against their right to get BA's.

[Marshall was impressed with the] ease in which some elements of economic theory could be expressed in mathematical terms. ...Marshall believed that economics dealt with regular features of human behaviour that could be measured by the earning, spending, saving, and investment of money. Money could thus be used as a measuring rod for most behaviour. It could measure the strength of motives, and was susceptible to mathematical and logical manipulation. It could be captured in a diagram or a formula and then described in simple English. Marshall was quick to point out that human beings were not motivated solely by a selfish interest to make and spend money, but often had other, more complex motives, such as the care and well-being of their families, the approval of the public or their peers, the pleasure of using a skill, or a sense of duty. By widening and deepening the motives for economic behaviour, Marshall made economics more human or even humane, counteracting its 'dismal science' image inherited from the classical economists. This shift of outlook, combined with the apparent rigour that the use of mathematics gave the subject, led to the new economics being described as 'neo-classical'. ...he has been described as the ...prime mover in the establishment of neo-classicism as the central paradigm in British economics from the turn of the nineteenth century onwards...

His books include The Economics of Industry (1879, written with his wife.), The Principles of Economics (1890). Industry and Trade (1919) and Money, Credit and Commerce (1923). According to his mentee, John Maynard Keynes, at the time of Marshall's death 'he was recognised as the father of economic science as it then existed in England.' Keynes would also write a biography of Marshall. 

We find out more about the Marshalls' family life from Mark Skousen's book: The Making of Modern Economics: The Lives and Ideas of the Great Thinkers (2001).

Biographer Peter Groenewegen suggests the Cambridge Don possibly suffered from a form of Jungian introversion, "extreme caution in all attitudes, activities and affective dispositions," and a "tendency to be precise, pedantic, and hypercritical," a pattern associated with sexual inadequacies. An observer noted that "Marshall was an ascetic man, all mind and no body," and Keynes thought that he was "sterile." He had a childless marriage; his wife was a working middle class woman. They had a dog and a cat as pets.

Sounds like cat ownership is an indictment. 

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