Scholars interested in the early publication history of the Wealth of Nations might like to consult Richard B. Sher, 2004, 'New light on the publication and reception of the Wealth of Nations',The Adam Smith Review, 1:3-29.

Vivienne Brown.

-----Original Message-----
From: michael perelman [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: 01 April 2011 18:05
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] Adam Smith, the "Founding Father" of Modern Economics?

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

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