Malthus Turner (2 results)

244pp. dw. sl.foxing. very good.

Second edition, presented and inscribed by Thomas Malthus: "East India College, Awarded to, Mr John Trotter, at the Public Examination of December 1817, as the first of his Class in, Political Economy, T. Rob. Malthus". Malthus taught as professor of history and political economy at the East India Company College at Haileybury from 1805 to his death in 1834, training generations of EIC management. Writing many years later, a former student recalled "We called him Pop; not in derision, for we had a great but rather distant respect for him. Though his theories were so cruel, his heart and manners were most kindly and courteous" (quoted in Maureen Alexander Turner, p. 54). John Trotter (1800-1825) entered the college in 1816 and subsequently joined the EIC; he died seven years later aboard the Royal George, just off Penang in Malaya, which was then an EIC port. Trotter was the son of Alexander Trotter (d. 1842), the financially imaginative paymaster of the Royal Navy. His engraved armorial bookplate is in both volumes; Malthus's ink inscription is on the front free endpaper verso. The History of the Anglo-Saxons by Sharon Turner (1768-1847) was originally published from 1799 to 1805. It quickly became "a powerful influence on historical thought for the succeeding half-century" (ODNB), and remains acknowledged as a turning point in Anglo-Saxon studies and a benchmark in historiography. Writing with a clear eye on the British Empire of his own day - in which Trotter's East India Company played so prominent a role - Turner presents the Anglo-Saxons as central to the historical development that set England on its imperial course. Maureen Alexander Turner, The Educational Ideas and Influence of Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), University of Glasgow Department of Education PhD thesis, 1991. 2 vols, quarto (271 x 213 mm), pp. x, 499, [1]; viii, 472, [8]. Large hand-coloured engraved folding map by Neele, showing "Territory inhabited by the Ancient Saxons north of the Elbe", as frontispiece of vol. I. Contemporary calf, rebacked, spines ruled and lettered in gilt, covers with double-rule panel in gilt, crest of the East India Company College blocked in gilt to centre, turn-ins in blind, marbled endpapers, edges sprinkled in brown and red. Light rubbing, extremities neatly restored, infrequent damp staining to otherwise clean contents, short closed tear to inner margin of folding map: just about a very good copy.