SMITH, Adam.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Sixth Edinburgh edition of the "first and greatest classic of modern economic thought" (PMM). This edition includes a 65-page Life of Smith and two essays by Germain Garnier (1754-1821) comparing Smithian economics with the contemporary approach of the French school.Following the publication of the Wealth of Nations in 1776, Smith moved to Edinburgh to take up a post as commissioner of customs, and he remained in the city until his death in 1790. Scotland provided an ideal base for Smith's wide-ranging analysis in the Wealth of Nations, which was famously written in Kirkcaldy, 11 miles north of the capital. For Donald Winch, Smith was "a North Briton who regarded Scotland not merely as his home but as the best place from which to observe the affairs of the capital with the minimum of involvement in party politics" (ODNB). "The Wealth of Nations had no rival in scope or depth when published and is still one of the few works in its field to have achieved classic status, meaning simply that it has sustained yet survived repeated reading, critical and adulatory, long after the circumstances which prompted it have become the object of historical enquiry" (ODNB).

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