ABSTRACT
An examination of the life-experiences of William Smart has illustrated in detail, for one distinguished, mainstream, though overlooked, British economist, that Ruskinian thinking interpenetrated practical and theoretical discussion of economics in the final decades of what some historians refer to as the long nineteenth century. Smart, whose work is relatively underexplored in the literature on economic thought, was by no means an exceptional case. This chapter will look in detail at samples of writing drawn from John Bates Clark, ‘the first’, according to the New Palgrave, ‘American economist to deserve and gain an international reputation’ (Dewey 1987: 428) and at a piece of writing by Alfred Marshall, in order to highlight both the Ruskinian influences and the changed climate of opinion concerning the cultural significance of economic theory. Ruskin's influence on Clark has not been acknowledged before in the literature and it may come as a surprise since he went on to become a major neoclassical theorist.
