The Lectures to Women given by Alfred Marshall at Cambridge in 1873, which focus on the future of the working classes, are unique in their content and purpose. They reveal the extent to which Alfred Marshall was involved in women's higher education, the almost radical political and social leanings of his youth and the relation he perceived between the science of political economy and wider social issues, such as the welfare of labour which constitutes the main subject of the lectures.

This critical edition makes the Lectures, which have sometimes been referred to by Marshallian scholars, available to a wider body of historians of economic thought. Based on Mary Paley Marshall's original notes, corrected by Marshall himself, the Lectures are supplemented by Marshall's lecture outlines. The volume also includes a paper on the future of the working classes from the same year and Marshall's literary debate with the trade unionist John Holmes which appeared in the Bee-Hive in 1874.

A contextualised commentary on the Lectures is provided by Rita McWilliams Tullberg, Ernesto Biagini and Tiziano Raffaelli who adopt three lines of enquiry respectively: the Lectures as part of the movement for higher education for women in the Victorian era, the Lectures as indicative of Marshall's stand in relation to the political-ideological framework of the time and the Lectures as an indicator of Marshall's methodological tendencies concerning the study of social phenomena.

This important new volume will introduce a number of thought-provoking issues into the ongoing debate on Marshall's social thought and provide new material for scholars and students from a variety of different disciplines.