Alfred Marshall's Lectures to Women - Some Economic Questions Directly Connected to the Welfare of the Laborer

The "Lectures to Women" given by Alfred Marshall at Cambridge in 1873, focus on the effects of working conditions on man's character and prospects. They offer insight into a radical period in Marshall's life of which relatively little is known. Based on Mary Paley Marshall's original notes and corrected by Marshall himself, the Lectures are supplemented by Marshall's lecture outlines in this study. Some contemporary and related texts are also published here including a paper on the future of the working class from the same year and Marshall's exchange of correspondence with the trade unionist John Holmes in 1874 known as the "Bee-Hive" debate. Commentaries on the notes are provided by the authors, who adopt three lines of enquiry: the lectures as part of the movement of higher education for women in the Victorian era; the lectures as indicative pf Marshall's vis-a-vis the political framework of the time; and the lectures as an indicator of Marshall's methodological tendencies concerning the study of social phenomena.