{"product_id":"the-wealth-of-nations-1776-first-edition","title":"The Wealth of Nations | 1776, first edition.","description":"\u003cp\u003eAdam Smith | The Wealth of Nations, 1776, first edition\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, one of the foundational works of modern economic thought and among the great books of the eighteenth century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLondon: Printed for W. Strahan and T. Cadell, in the Strand, 1776.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwo volumes, quarto. Contemporary calf, sympathetically rebacked to style, preserving the character of the original binding, and housed in a custom solander box. Internally an exceptionally fresh example, the paper notably clean and bright and the impression crisp throughout. With occasional early marginal markings, underlining and calculations in an eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century hand. Some vulnerable leaves have been carefully strengthened and the bindings professionally restored, leaving the set sound, handsome and entirely usable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe binding bears the name “Wakefield”, indicating an early owner, while the surviving annotations and calculations provide compelling evidence that the volumes were actively read rather than merely preserved. The marginalia are restrained and contemporary in character, an appealing record of an early reader working through Smith’s arguments while they were still relatively new.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe copy conforms to the recognised bibliographical requirements of the 1776 first edition: two quarto volumes; the half-title present in volume II, as issued; the errata; publisher’s advertisements; and the characteristic cancelled leaves introduced during printing. These physical points, together with the setting and pagination, establish it as the true London first edition of Smith’s work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Wealth of Nations was published on 9 March 1776 after more than a decade of preparation. The first edition appears to have comprised only approximately 500 to 750 copies and sold out within six months. It was followed by a second London edition in 1778 and by numerous subsequent editions and translations as Smith’s ideas spread rapidly throughout Europe and beyond.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIts importance is difficult to overstate. Smith brought together questions of labour, productivity, trade, taxation, capital and economic development into a systematic investigation of how nations become prosperous. His analysis of the division of labour, competition, exchange and the failures of mercantilist restrictions transformed political economy and provided the intellectual framework from which much of modern economics subsequently developed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe celebrated opening discussion of the division of labour, illustrated through the manufacture of pins, demonstrated how specialisation could radically increase productivity. Elsewhere Smith attacked artificial restrictions on trade and the privileges of mercantilism, examined the relationship between wages, profits and rents, considered the role of colonies and international commerce, and set out the proper functions and limits of government within a commercial society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe book appeared at a remarkable historical moment. Published only months before the American Declaration of Independence, Smith devoted substantial attention to Britain’s colonies and argued that the existing imperial system imposed enormous costs while restricting natural patterns of trade. The Wealth of Nations was therefore not an abstract economic textbook but an intervention in some of the most urgent political and commercial questions of its age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst-edition copies were produced in the substantial quarto format characteristic of major eighteenth-century works. Surviving examples are encountered in a variety of contemporary bindings, reflecting the normal practice by which purchasers had books bound according to their own means and taste. The contemporary calf on the present copy is therefore an important part of its early history rather than a later attempt to reproduce an imagined publisher’s binding.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eParticularly attractive here is the combination of an early binding with unusually fresh text leaves. The set has clearly lived a genuine eighteenth-century intellectual life: it was read, marked and calculated over, but has survived without the heavy browning, staining or aggressive restoration that can compromise copies of this size and age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe early annotations reinforce rather than diminish that character. They demonstrate that Smith’s arguments were being actively considered by an early owner, transforming the set from a merely well-preserved first edition into an artefact of the contemporary reception of one of the defining intellectual works of the Enlightenment.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA handsome and notably fresh first edition of the book described by Printing and the Mind of Man as the “first and greatest classic of modern economic thought”, preserved in an early owner’s contemporary binding and with compelling evidence of contemporary use.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eESTC T96668; Goldsmiths’ 11392; Kress 7621; PMM 221; Rothschild 1897; Grolier, English 57.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Adam Smith","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64517030642041,"sku":null,"price":200000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0607\/3119\/5647\/files\/176145_2.jpg?v=1788970202","url":"https:\/\/www.baylissbooks.co.uk\/products\/the-wealth-of-nations-1776-first-edition","provider":"Bayliss Rare Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}