Editorial Foreword

Summary

A Revision of the Treaty was largely the product of a period of discussion with Harcourt, Brace during the summer and autumn of 1921. In June 1921, Keynes had proposed to Alfred Harcourt that he prepare for publication at the end of 1921 ‘a final revised edition’ of The Economic Consequences of the Peace. For this edition he proposed to write a new introduction of some 40 pages, to leave the present text as it stood and to deal with new facts or criticisms in footnotes or a series of appendices to the chapters of Economic Consequences.

To this proposal Alfred Harcourt replied in late June that Keynes ‘give something near to prayerful consideration to making a new book out of the new material and even such old material… from “The Economic Consequences of the Peace”’ as he needed. He strongly argued the case for a restatement, saying that the public would not buy or read a revision but merely take note of the changes from reviews, and that Keynes would write a better book freed from the constraints of the earlier work.

Keynes appears to have accepted this proposal with alacrity, for on 3 August he sent Harcourt a draft table of contents for a volume of about 40,000 words entitled ‘Essays Supplementary to The Economic Consequences of the Peace’.