ABSTRACT
A puzzle surrounds Keynes as a writer. On the one hand, he is variously described as an economist who could write well, as a master of the English language and as a great writer. Harrod (1951:647) declared that Keynes had such a ‘supreme mastery of English prose’ that some might think that it would be ‘as a prose writer that he will be longest remembered’. Johnson (1977:90, 92) observed that Keynes, with his ability to use words ‘as an artist’, stood out among economists because several of his works could be read ‘as literature in their own right’. According to Galbraith (1987:232), Keynes was ‘a lucid and resourceful master of English prose’, while, for Skidelsky (2000a:xviii), ‘Keynes was a masterly user of English [whose] language, logical and robust, could suddenly take wing as his mind soared beyond the strict requirements of his argument’. On the other hand, of all twentieth-century economists, he is the one whose writings are most likely to generate conflicting interpretations, not just of the same book but even of the same chapter or paragraphs. Readers of the secondary literature on Keynes cannot fail to be struck by the extent and durability of the debates concerning the content and meaning of his main writings, be they in economics, philosophy, politics or elsewhere. How is it, then, that someone who is widely regarded as a good writer can apparently also be such an unclear writer? Surely, in matters economic, political or philosophical, part of being a good writer is an ability to convey thought lucidly and unambiguously as well as an ability to convey it gracefully and skilfully? Surely a good writer in these areas should combine clarity with eloquence, sense with sensibility?
