ABSTRACT
The first recognizably modern learned economics periodical published in Britain, The Economic Journal, was inaugurated exactly a century ago, in 1891. The organ of the newly formed British Economic Association (BEA), later the Royal Economic Society (RES) (Coats, 1968; Kadish and Freeman, 1990; Winch, 1990), it soon acquired a distinguished reputation in its field, which it has retained ever since. Together with the appearance of the first edition of Alfred Marshall’s magisterial Principles of Economics in the previous year, the early 1890s truly constitute a watershed in the history of British economics. Yet, given the high reputation British nineteenth-century economists enjoyed within the international scholarly community, the surprising thing about the advent of the Economic Journal is not its timing —for in the last quarter of the century new scholarly organizations and publications were proliferating in many countries-but the fact that its sponsors were so hesitant, tardy, and unadventurous in approaching the desired consummation. The absence of strong leadership from Alfred Marshall, unquestionably the most influential single British economist of the period, was a retarding factor. But, more generally, by comparison with the situation on the European continent and, especially in the USA, the slow growth of British higher education and the delayed academic institutionalization of political economy constitute more important explanations (Larson, 1978; Coats, 1980). For it is generally acknowledged that the expansion of modern social science periodical literature has not solely, or perhaps even mainly, been determined by intellectual forces (Lengyel, 1967; Macrae, 1967; Bell, 1967).
