The Economic Development of India. The first four editions. With: The Trade of the Indian Ocean.

The author's annotated copies of the first four editions of her influential survey, together with her copy of The Trade of the Indian Ocean. The second edition is extensively marked up with her revisions, additions, and corrections; the fourth includes her note to the publisher instructing her preferred blurb for the dust jacket. The first edition contains a few minor manuscript revisions, none incorporated into the text of the second edition. The second is revised on roughly half the pages, with most changes incorporated into the third edition. They comprise grammatical corrections, changes of tense, and updates to information and statistics. The third edition is not annotated. Laid into the fourth edition is a letter from her publisher, dated 25 June 1952, requesting a blurb for the new edition, on which she has written, "Revised & enlarged edition of a standard work, bringing the story down to the eve of the Second World War", wording subsequently used on the jacket. The Trade of the Indian Ocean has her notes on the rear free endpaper. The second, third, and fourth editions have her ownership signature on the front free endpaper; the first edition and The Trade of the Indian Ocean are signed by her daughter, Mary Anstey. All annotations are in the author's hand. Anstey lived in Bombay from 1914 until 1920, where she studied economic theory and amassed extensive statistical material, before becoming an assistant lecturer at the London School of Economics in 1921. "The main focus of her work was on India. Her seminal monograph, The Economic Development of India examines the origin and consequences of poverty, which she attributed to the prevailing backward social order that posed an obstacle to growth, provoking such distortions as high population growth, and unenterprising and irrational attitudes. Her analysis was widely accepted at the time" (Cord, p. 63). Her interpretation has since been challenged, with Indian underdevelopment more often attributed to colonial fiscal extraction and structural inequality. The book nevertheless remained a standard text well after the Second World War. Robert A. Cord, The Palgrave Companion to LSE Economics, 2019. Together 5 vols, octavo. Original cloth; the third and fourth editions in dust jackets. Somewhat worn and well-read, especially The Trade of the Indian Ocean; still overall good to very good copies.…