Introduction

New knowledge on Marshall's work helps us to see him in a different perspective from that of a shy marginalist, who lacked the courage to march unhesitantingly towards Walras's general equilibrium. Recent developments in evolutionary economics, neuroeconomics and industrial economics vindicate many Marshallian intuitions, derived from his early interest in psychology and biology, though at the time held back by the backwardness of analytical tools. The text maintains that the book, of which it forms the introduction, provides a revaluation of Marshall's work, a better understanding of the interconnection between its analytical and non-analytical components, usually seen as opposite to each other, and helps to place partial equilibrium analysis in a wider context, as part and parcel of Marshall's evolutionary economics.