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Charles Hall's importance has been recognized by a number of scholars. He has been described by C. R. Fay as "the first of the early socialists", and by Mark Blaug as "the first socialist critic of the industrial revolution". According to Max Beer he provided "the first interpretation of the voice of rising Labour", and Anton Menger regarded him as "the first socialist who saw in rent and interest unjust appropriations of the return of labour, and who explicitly claimed for the worker the undiminished product of his industry".2Menger, in his bookThe Right to the Whole Produce of Labour(first published in German in 1886), devoted three or four pages to Hall and drew attention to his early formulation of the theory of surplus value. Since then there have been several discussions of Hall's work, but almost without exception they have been quite brief: perhaps the most notable are those provided by H. S. Foxwell in his introduction to the English translation of Menger, and by Beer in hisHistory of British SocialismH. L. Beales, who also wrote a few pages about him in his bookThe Early English Socialists, lamented some twenty years ago that Hall (in common with several other pioneers of socialism and democracy in Britain) had not yet found a biographer. In fact it seems unlikely, owing to the paucity of material, that a biography will ever be possible. But it is nonetheless surprising that Hall has received so little individual attention; and the author of a recent summary of his ideas (again in the context of a general history of socialism) could describe him as "ce précurseur quelque peu oublie". It appears that an essay may usefully be written drawing together what is known about him and attempting a fuller examination of his writings than has been provided hitherto.