This is the final volume of the series of Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes undertaken by the Royal Economic Society as its memorial to a great economist, who not only transformed economic analysis and policy-making during his lifetime, but also served as editor of The Economic Journal for thirty-three years and Secretary to the Society for thirty-one years.

The series as a whole has been shaped by two strategic decisions taken early in its planning stages by the committee originally charged with responsibility for the edition: Richard Kahn, as Keynes's literary executor in respect of his economic writings and owner of the copyright in his unpublished economic papers; Roy Harrod, as his first biographer; Austin Robinson, as Keynes's successor as Secretary of the Society and thus managing editor of the edition. The first was to allow Keynes to speak for himself – to make available to scholars of another generation Keynes's own expositions of his thinking with an absolute minimum of commentary, primarily designed to explain the circumstances in which an item was written, and a minimum of scholarly apparatus. The second was to organise the edition in its present four categories: books published in Keynes's lifetime (Vols. I–X); professional writings (Vols. XI–XIV); ‘activities’ (Vols. XIV–XXVII); social, political and literary writings (Vol. XXVIII). It thus differed from the more usual chronological fashion by type of document used in Sraffa's edition of Ricardo, Jaffe's edition of Walras' correspondence or Black's edition of Jevons' papers and correspondence.