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Bentham, James and John Mill, Jevons, Sidgwick and Edgeworth all saw themselves as members of a distinct school of economists who took the pursuit of happiness as a guiding principle for the behaviour of individuals and governments. The greatest or general happiness became the ultimate test for all public policy and economic issues.

John Bonner's outstanding account of the development of utilitarian economics from the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries examines, in turn, the links between classical economics and the utilitarians, the influence of utilitarianism on modern welfare economics and the lives and times of the classical utilitarians.

Now that utilitarianism is again in fashion, among philosophers and social scientists as well as economists, John Bonner's book reminds students, scholars and policymakers that the classical utilitarians held contradictory views on what happiness could include, how utility could be measured, and whether they were radical reformers or supporters of the establishment.