In 1969, when Don Moggridge joined the editorial team of the Royal Economic Society's project to publish John Maynard Keynes's papers, there still was not a single volume in print. Roy Harrod, Austin Robinson, and Richard Kahn were the original advisory team for the project, and they had hired Elizabeth Johnson to be the Editor in 1954. The first four volumes were nearly ready for publication when Moggridge joined Johnson as Joint Editor in 1969, but even those four volumes were two years away from appearing in print.
When the project was launched by the Royal Economic Society, Austin Robinson had declared, “Not like Ricardo!,” in reference to the society's seemingly interminable project to publish David Ricardo's papers.1 But by 1969, the Keynes project was looking very much like another Ricardo. The long delay in getting the first volumes out was in part because, as Austin Robinson (1990...
