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The Poets' Guide to Economics
Shelley called poets, ‘the unacknowledged legislators of the world’. John Ramsden’s new book, The Poets Guide to Economics describes their now largely forgotten contribution to economics. Concise and witty, the book takes eleven poets – a chapter each – and describes their economic ideas putting them in context. Extracts from the originals allow these great writers to speak for themselves. The tone is by turns eloquent, outraged, elegiac and amused, as we explore the surprisingly fruitful encounter of two very different worlds. The book starts with Daniel Defoe in the 1690s and closes with Ezra Pound who died in 1972. As expected, the poets’ take on economics is often visionary and idealistic, but their theories are mostly grounded on real insight, sometimes strikingly ahead of their time as they predict evils all too familiar to the 21st Century.
224 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 1, 2026
I would give this 3.5 stars if I could. I round up to 4 as it fits my background and interests rather particularly and has given me much to think about. But I suspect it would be less engaging (though not inaccessible) for a reader without a basic familiarity with economic thought and English-language poets over the past few centuries.
The book is not systematic—it selects eleven poets from the late 17th C to the mid 20th C and in each chapter provides brief selections from their economic thought, in chronological order. There are many nice insights and turns of phrase and it’s interesting to see the parallels and changes between the authors, which often involve romanticizing of other systems political organisation, which as medieval guilds, socialism, and/or fascism.
The very last sentence of the book (“For better or for worse, poetry and economics now went their separate ways.”), however, does feel casually unkind to modern poets. (Or course, modernity is generally unkind to poets, perhaps, as the preferred media of public consumption has moved on over the last century or two). Or perhaps it is a challenge for modern poets (or modern economists), to bring the back together.
The book is not systematic—it selects eleven poets from the late 17th C to the mid 20th C and in each chapter provides brief selections from their economic thought, in chronological order. There are many nice insights and turns of phrase and it’s interesting to see the parallels and changes between the authors, which often involve romanticizing of other systems political organisation, which as medieval guilds, socialism, and/or fascism.
The very last sentence of the book (“For better or for worse, poetry and economics now went their separate ways.”), however, does feel casually unkind to modern poets. (Or course, modernity is generally unkind to poets, perhaps, as the preferred media of public consumption has moved on over the last century or two). Or perhaps it is a challenge for modern poets (or modern economists), to bring the back together.
April 27, 2024
You know how to ball I know Ramsay McDonald
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews