An Essay on the Principle of Population; or, a view of its past and present effects on human happiness; with an inquiry into our prospects respecting the future removal or mitigation of the evils which it might occasion ... fourth edition

Book Description

London: printed for J. Johnson by T. Bensley, 1807. 2 volumes, 8vo. (8 7/8 x 5 1/2 inches). Half-titles. Original brown paper-covered boards, paper labels to backstrips, uncut (small tears, chips, corners rubbed, labels rubbed). [With]: Additions to the Fourth and Former Editions of an Essay on the Principle of Population, &c. &c. London: W. Clowes for John Murray, 1817. 8vo (8 7/8 x 5 1/2 inches). Half-title. Original brown paper- covered boards (almost uniform with the first title), paper labels to backstrips, uncut (small tears, chips, corners rubbed, labels rubbed) Provenance: A. Leonard Fuller (armorial bookplate) Malthus' masterpiece, a very important work in the field of economics and a source of Darwin's "idea of 'the struggle for existence'" (PMM). Fine untouched copies of the fourth edition of the first title, and first edition of the second title. First published anonymously in a single volume in 1798, Malthus used this work to argue that, as the population of a community increases geometrically while food supplies increase only arithmetically, "population is necessarily limited by the 'checks' of vice and misery" (DNB) and that it is the poorest sections of the community which suffer most. The controversy that his work provoked persuaded him to issue a series of revisions to and expansions of his original theory. A 'new' (or 2nd)edition appeared in 1803; a 2-volume 3rd edition in 1806; the present 4th edition in 1807; the Additions appeared in 1817 and were incorporated into a 3-volume fifth edition which appeared in the same year; the sixth edition (the last to be published during his lifetime) appeared in 1826. "The Malthusian theory of population came at the right time to harden existing feeling against the Poor Laws and Malthus was a leading spirit behind the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. The simplicity of the central idea of the Essay also caught the imagination of thinkers in other fields. [William] Paley was a convert to the Malthusian view, and both [Charles] Darwin and [Alfred Russel] Wallace clearly acknowledged Malthus as a source of the idea of 'the struggle for existence'... certainly reading the Essay was for both of them an important event in the development of their theory of natural selection, and they were glad to quote such a well- known and weighty source for their ideas" (PMM). `Kress B.5219 & V.6973; cf. Lowndes II, p.1459; cf. PMM 251

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