SOURCE: "The Early Economics of Keynes," in The American Economic Review, Vol. LXII, No. 2, May, 1972, pp. 416-21.

In the following essay, Johnson examines the relationship between Keynes's plans for the International Monetary Fund system, established after World War II, and his early economic work specifically, his thoughts on the Indian currency problem and his views on international monetary relationships directly after World War I.

The Royal Economic Society has this year published the first eight of a projected twenty-four-volume series of The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes. Six of them are already in print or in library; the other two, edited by Elizabeth Johnson, contain a great deal of hitherto unpublished material on Keynes's activities from his graduation from Cambridge until his resignation from the Treasury in 1919. These two volumes throw a great deal of light both on the character, personality, and intellectual development of Keynes, and...