Sarah Ricardo’s tale of Wealth and Virtue

The paper reconstructs the life and activity of the author of a famous novel for boys as well as of a textbook of arithmetic and of essays on educational issues, who was also the sister of a famous economist. The bulk of the paper is dedicated to Alfred Dudley, a novel for boys about wealth, status, speculation, poverty, manual work, emigration and the role of virtue in making a decent society possible. Also the author’s educational views are discussed, highlighting her opposition to Benthamite programs and her proposal for an inter-denominational religious education, and arguing that her contributions to plans for a general education system were meant to respond to what had been Smith’s, Malthus’s, and perhaps also her brother’s question, namely, how may wealth and virtue go together?