This two-volume collection brings together the first 53 Joseph Fisher Lectures in economics and commerce, presented at the Adelaide University every other year since 1904. Funds for the Lectures, together with a medal for the top accounting student each year, were kindly provided by a €1,000 endowment to the University by the prominent Adelaide businessman Joseph Fisher in 1903 – before his death, to avoid 10 per cent going to the government! (Since the average adult male wage is now well over 200 times greater than it was in 1903 in nominal dollar terms, that endowment represents more than $0.5 million in terms of today's spending power.) An additional sum of $10,500 was donated to the Adelaide University Centenary Appeal in 1974 by Trustees of Settlements made by Joseph Fisher. The Lectures, which are free and open to the public, have been published by the University as stand-alone booklets, and copies distributed at the fund's expense.

The Lectures are mostly on economic issues and reflect Fisher's interests in liberal markets and non-interventionist government. They have stood the test of time extremely well, while also providing a reminder of the events and concerns that were prominent at different times during the past century. That, plus the fact that many of the earlier Lectures are now out of print and only a small subset of them were reprinted in scholarly journals, justifies putting them together in this collection for posterity.