PHELPS BROWN, Henry
 
The Balloon; published by Macmillan & Co Ltd., London (and St Martin’s Press, New York) in 1953. An outstanding presentation copy inscribed in the month of publication by an important figure of economics
 
Description
 
Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt. Without jacket. Contemporary pencil price marking ‘3/6’ to upper right corner of front free endpaper. Spine slightly rolled, minor rubbing to tips, a very good, internally fresh copy.
First edition, first impression, presentation copy, bearing a significant inscription from the author in blue ink on the front free endpaper: ‘Professor Ronald Edwards, with the warm regards of his friend the author. Henry Phelps Brown. November 1953.’
The Balloon is the sole novel by the eminent economist Sir Henry Phelps Brown (1906–1994), written during his tenure as Professor of the Economics of Labour at the LSE. Drawing upon his first hand experiences in the Royal Artillery during the Second World War, Brown uses the medium of fiction to provide a deeply analytical study of military morale and administrative group dynamics during the Phoney War in France.
Presentation copies of The Balloon are remarkably scarce, and the present inscription provides an exceptional, unrecorded example of professional and personal connection between two of the primary architects of post-war British economic policy. The recipient, Sir Ronald Edwards, was an equally influential economist, serving as the LSE's Professor of Industrial Economics and later as a key economic advisor to the British government as Chairman of the Electricity Council.
Inscribed in November 1953, the exact month of the book's publication. The volume later came into the private library of Donald Gunn MacRae, the LSE’s first chair of sociology. Copies of this uncommon title with direct, academic presentation provenance are exceptionally rare.