POLANYI, Karl
 
Origins of Our Time: The Great Transformation. Published by Victor Gollancz Ltd., London in 1945.
 
Description
 
Octavo. Publisher’s orange cloth, spine lettered in gilt, though significantly dulled. No dust jacket. Ownership signature of British sociologist Donald G. MacRae to the front free endpaper, dated ‘47. Spine lightly sunned with minor rubbing at the tips, cloth otherwise clean and binding firm. A very good, tight copy.
First UK edition, first printing, of Polanyi’s foundational masterpiece of 20th-century political economy and social theory. Originally published in the United States the previous year under the title The Great Transformation, this British edition was released under Polanyi’s preferred title, Origins of Our Time.
This copy features an important academic association, having belonged to Donald Gunn MacRae (1921–1997), a pioneering figure in post-war British sociology and one of the earliest lecturers in the discipline at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he later held the chair of Sociology. MacRae acquired the volume in1947, a critical period during the institutional expansion of economic sociology in Britain. Copies of this wartime edition are scarce, particularly with notable provenance mapping the book's direct influence on mid-century British social science.