Writings
The corpus of extant Smith writings is quite modest, certainly relative to the published works and manuscripts of many other prominent figures in the history of economics. In part this may be explained by the fact that he wrote slowly and (self-consciously) with difficulty.
Smith was also not a prolific correspondent. More interestingly, it is also partly explained by his making a considered decision to have most of his unpublished manuscripts destroyed upon his death. Smith had already expressed a desire for this to be done as early as 1773, in a letter to Hume; and it was, 16 volumes of manuscripts being consigned to the flames in the last days before Smith’s death (Corr: 168; Stewart 1811 [1980]: 327-8).The first of his two books, TMS, was published in 1759, while he was still Professor at Glasgow, and was well received. There were five further revised editions during Smith’s lifetime (1761, 1767, 1774, 1781 and 1790), with the sixth edition in particular involving substantial additions. It was also translated into French in 1764 and German in 1770. Skinner (1996: 3) elegantly sums up its central purpose with regard to descriptive theory (it includes normative theory as well):
The TMS... may be regarded as an exercise in social philosophy, which was designed in part to show the way in which so self-regarding a creature as man erects (by natural as distinct from artificial means) barriers against his own passions, thus explaining the observed fact that he is always found in “troops and companies”. The argument places a good deal of emphasis on the importance of general rules of behaviour which are related to experience and which may thus vary in respect of content.
Prior to TMS Smith had published just two pieces of work, both anonymously and both in the short-lived Edinburgh Review: a review of Samuel Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary and a long “Letter to...
the Edinburgh Review” (1755 and 1756 respectively) - though he had also written the (unsigned) preface to a 1748 book of poems by William Hamilton, and probably the dedication to the 1758 second edition (for all these, see Wightman et al. 1980: 227-62; hereafter EPS). The review of Johnson reflects Smith’s early and continuing interest in language. The “Letter” is concerned with the comparative character of learning and intellectual temper in Britain and France, including discussion of the Encyclopedie (1751 forward, five volumes having appeared by 1755) and particularly, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discours on the origin and foundations of human inequality (1755; commonly called the “Second Discourse”). Nothing else was published by Smith before TMS, nor between TMS and WN (with the exception of one essay noted below), nor between WN and Smith’s death, apart from the revised editions of the two books themselves. But this publication history says more about the difference between intellectual culture in eighteenth-century Europe and academic culture in the contemporary world, than it does about Smith particularly.Hence, as a result of TMS, when WN appeared in 1776 it was the work of a person with an already high intellectual reputation in Europe. The book gained good sales, with four further revised editions during Smith’s lifetime (1778, 1784, 1786 and 1789). The 1784 third edition in particular involved significant changes. It was also quickly translated into German and French during 1776-78 and 1781. (For studies of the reception and diffusion of WN, see Lai 2000; Carpenter 2002; Tribe 2002.) The character and contents of Smith’s more famous book on political economy are examined in detail below. But it may be mentioned here (and also taken up further below) that the question of the relationship between the doctrines enunciated in Smith’s two books has been an ongoing source of controversy, at least since the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Smith had most of his manuscript writings destroyed at the time of his death but not all of them.
The exceptions consist of six essays which were subsequently published together in 1795 as Essays on Philosophical Subjects (re-edited and published in EPS: 1-225). The first three of the essays concern the history of science - astronomy, ancient physics, and “ancient logics and metaphysics”, respectively - with the first of these much the largest. The dates of their writing are uncertain but the astronomy essay appears to be largely an early composition, and almost certainly completed prior to 1758. It has figured prominently in interpretations of Smith’s thought as a whole, his conception of the character and progress of astronomy being understood as implying his view of the nature of science in general. The remaining three essays primarily concern aesthetics: sense perception, the fine or “imitative” arts (together with an appendix on “the Affinity between Music, Dancing, and Poetry”), and a comparative analysis of English and Italian verse. Only the last of these three can be dated with any precision, at about 1782.Since the end of the eighteenth century the corpus of Smith’s known extant writings has been importantly augmented, most particularly, by the discovery of three sets of student lecture notes, all large documents. In 1958 J.M. Lothian discovered a set of student notes from Smith’s 1762-63 “Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres”, publishing an edition of them in 1963 (re-edited and published in Bryce 1983a: 1-200; hereafter LRB). This is a highly detailed transcription of 30 lectures, averaging almost seven pages in modern print per lecture. The character and significance of language is a central motif of these lectures, as it is also in the latter essays in EPS. Smith’s no longer extant 1751 dissertation for his appointment as Professor of Logic, entitled “De origine idearum”, appears also to have been concerned with language, depending on the sense of “idea” there. Recall also that his first publication, the review of Johnson’s Dictionary, concerns language as well.
In 1761 he published an essay on “Considerations concerning the first formation of languages, and the different genius of original and compounded languages”, subsequently republishing it in the third to sixth editions of TMS.In relation to Smith’s economic thought, it is the further two sets of subsequently discovered lecture notes which are of particular interest. They are fairly parallel texts on “jurisprudence”, together amounting to over 550 pages in modern print (though the earlier of the two is much the larger), resulting from two equivalent courses of lectures given in 1762-63 and 1763-64. The latter set of notes, which happens to coincide with Smith’s last teaching session at Glasgow, was discovered by Edwin Cannan and published by him in 1896 (re-edited and published in Meek et al. 1978: 395-558; hereafter LJB). The former set was discovered also by Lothian in 1958, in the same private library where he found the 1762-63 lecture notes on rhetoric and belles lettres (re-edited and published in Meek et al. 1978: 1-394; hereafter LJA). These documents contain a quite substantial quantity of economic analysis, enabling some comparison between the state of Smith’s economic thinking at this time and in 1776 (see further to this, the section on “Controversies” below). The only further Smith manuscripts are an early draft of a small part of WN (hereafter edWN), and two slight fragments on division of labour, all three dating from the 1760s, discovered by W.R. Scott and published by him in 1937 (re-edited and published in Meek et al. 1978: 562-86). Strictly speaking, all three sets of lecture notes are not Smith “writings”; but there are considerable grounds for supposing their veracity.