SMITH, Adam.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations. Very rare first edition in French of the Wealth of Nations, the first translation following its publication in English in 1776."This translation of the 1776 English edition of WN has remained a mystery. Was it printed in The Hague? If not, where was it printed? Who was M***, identified on the title pages as the translator? Copies are rare within French libraries" (Carpenter, p. 20). Carpenter & Sabbagh's recent scholarship identifies the printer as the ducal press of Deux-Ponts (now Zweibrücken). Though a commercial venture, the press used a fictitious imprint to avoid problems when printing French-language works that risked running afoul of the censor. The translator was Jean-Louis Carra (1742-1793), an active contributor to the Encyclopédie d'Yverdon, later in the French Revolution to join the Jacobins, where he was appointed joint head of the Bibliothèque nationale, but clashed with Robespierre and was guillotined in 1793.The text follows the original closely, omitting a section on religious instruction, alongside other minor religious changes. The edition was preceded in French translation only by an extract, Fragment sur les colonies en général, et sur celles des anglois en particulier, translated by Reverdil, which had been published in Lausanne and Basel earlier in 1778 to test public demand for the work.

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