The ‘Elusive figure who hides in the Preface of Cambridge books'

A complete monographic study on the life and work of Richard Kahn has yet to be produced, although we have a great many texts on specific aspects or the general framework of his thought. ¹ This paper, too, is limited in scope; it serves simply to reconstruct the context of Kahn's work. What I mean by reconstructing the context is to bring light to bear on the network of professional and personal relations within which the thought of an author developed, and to bring into focus the problems and questions for which the authors sought solutions and answers. I have made use of all those fragments of evidence, drawing also on unpublished material and the correspondence, which could help place these texts by Kahn not in the context of our present studies so much as in their specific context. This is in no way to detract from their importance to contemporary economic theory and policy, but rather to appreciate the significance they held at the time they were written, without attributing them with the relevant language and criteria of contemporary economic theory.