This book offers a comprehensive treatment of the development of Keynes economic ideas in the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. It is the first such exclusively economic theory treatment of his career since the Keynes Collected Works were published, and his papers opened to the public. It uses that material, the historical record of the economics of Keynes's time and place and the scholarship available on Keynes's biography and philosophy to build a narrative of his ideas on economic theory from before World War I - when he was lecturing on economics at Cambridge - through the General Theory in 1936. The predominant early influence is Marshall, and Keynes's Marshallian roots are explored in detail. Three themes emerge over his career, each forming a section of the present book and a part of the General Theory: the essentially indeterminancy of labor market analysis, an evolving view of the influence of speculation and trading practices on financial markets and a formal model of the monetary economics of a system that combines these aspects.

Introduction: Motivation, Methodology and Overview
Motivation: Approaching the General Theory Historically
Methodology: The Marshallian Structure of the General Theory
Overview
PART 1: KEYNES, CAMBRIDGE AND UNEMPLOYMENT
Introduction: Keynes, the General Theory and the Labor Market
The 'Late Victorian' Context of Marshall's Labor Market Views
The Treatment of Labor Markets in Marshallian Economics
Keynes and Labor Market
PART 2: A PHILOSOPHER AND A SPECULATOR
Looking Backward from the General Theory: On the Historical Origins of Keynes's Financial Market Views
Stock Equilibrium in Asset Markets and 'the Folly of Amateur Speculators'
The Evolution of Keynes's Views on Asset Markets and Speculation
PART 3: 'SHIFTING EQUILIBRIA' IN A MONETARY ECONOMY
The Development of Cambridge Monetary Thought 1870-1935
Keynes's Development as a Cambridge Monetary Theorist
Sraffa and Hayek on 'Own Rates of Interest'
'The Essential Properties of Interest and Money'
CONCLUSION: A THEORY OF A MONETARY ECONOMY
'Natural Rate' Mutations: Keynes, Leijonhifvud and the Wicksell Connection

MICHAEL S. LAWLOR is Professor of Economics at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA. He holds a joint appointment at the Wake Forest School of Medicine, Department of Public Health Sciences. He has held visiting appointments in the Department of Economics at the University of Cambridge and Duke University and is a Life Member of Clare-Hall, Cambridge.