This is from my new book, The Invisible Handcuffs.  I would like to
get some responses from listers.

Initially, Smith's Wealth of Nations did not make much of an
impression, despite its popularity today. Although his earlier book,
the now less known Theory of Moral Sentiments, was a sensation, his
more famous work seemed as if it had missed its mark. Yet unlike most
ancient writers, whose importance recedes into the distant past,
Smith's influence rapidly grew.

The book went through five editions, but each of the first two
editions sold only 500 copies    a substantial number, but far from a
roaring success (Waterman 1998b). In Parliament, where the members
frequently quoted important political economists, Charles James Fox
made the first reference to Wealth of Nations on November 11, 1783,
six years after the book first appeared (Rashid 1992, p. 493).  Still
another ten years passed before two of Smith's friends, Alexander
Wedderburn and William Petty's great grandson and former prime
minister, the Marquess of Lansdowne, mentioned the book in the House
of Lords (Rae 1895, p. 291).

Even in 1789 when Thomas Robert Malthus signed out the 1784 edition of
Wealth of Nations from his college library, he was just the third
person to do so (Waterman 1998a, p. 295). Up to the year 1800, only a
few Cambridge colleges had acquired the book (Waterman 1998b). Emma
Rothschild notes with some irony that when Adam Smith died in 1790,
the influential Annual Register devoted but twelve lines to Smith
compared with sixty five for Major Ray, a deputy quartermaster general
with an interest in barometers. The Scots Magazine gave Smith a scant
nine lines (Rothschild 1992, p. 74).

Only after the French Revolution of 1789 made British property owners
fearful, did The Wealth of Nations take on an air of importance.
Thereafter, the rich and powerful appreciated Smith's ideological
influence. For example, Francis Horner, editor of the Edinburgh
Review, rejected a request to prepare a set of notes for a new edition
of The Wealth of Nations.  He explained his refusal in a letter to
Thomas Thomson, written on August 15, 1803:

"I should be reluctant to expose S's errors before his work had
operated its full effect.  We owe much at present to the superstitious
worship of S's name; and we must not impair that feeling, till the
victory is more complete ....  [U]ntil we can give a correct and
precise theory of the origin of wealth, his popular and plausible and
loose hypothesis is as good for the vulgar as any others." [cited in
Horner 1843; 1: 229]

Thereafter, Smith's influence steadily increased, along with the rise
of Procrustean market ideology. In fact, as one current Smith scholars
observed, "There were more new editions of The Wealth of Nations
published in the 1990s than in the 1890s, and more in the 1890s than
in the 1790s" (Young 2007).




-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA
95929

530 898 5321
fax 530 898 5901
http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com