LAW, John - WOOD, John Philip.

£7,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

A Sketch of the Life and Projects of John Law of Lauriston, Comptroller General of the Finances in France. First edition of the first biography of Law, whose financial schemes of an expanded paper money supply brought economic ruin to France yet paved the way for the modern credit economy.The biographer, John Philip Wood, was a local historian of Cramond, where Law was born. He had "access to certain materials which are not now available" and "included a number of interesting genealogical and personal details in his book", though he "made no attempt to examine the 'system' objectively or even to analyse his subject's character in the light of his career" (Hyde, pp. 36, 216). Both Antoin Murphy and James Buchan cite Wood's work in their scholarly biographies of Law, although part of Wood's account of Law's genealogy is challenged by Murphy. The work was republished in an expanded edition in 1824.

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