SMITH, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, First Creech Octavo Edition (1806)

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. With a Life of the Author. Also, A View of the Doctrine of Smith Compared with that of the French Economists; with a Method of Facilitating the Study of his Works; from the French of M. Garnier.

Edinburgh: Printed for William Creech; Mundell, Doig, and Stevenson; Arch. Constable and Company, Edinburgh; and T. Ostell, London, 1806. In three volumes.

The first of the Edinburgh octavo editions issued by Creech and his partners, adding a Life of Smith and Germain Garnier’s comparison of Smith with the French Economists, in a uniform contemporary calf binding with a distinctive swan tool to the spines.

3 volumes. vol. I, v, [1], lxiii, [1], 360 pp.; vol. II, vi, 512, [4] pp.; vol. III, v, [1], 448, [50, index] pp. Letterpress tables in the text. Octavo, 21.5 x 14 cm. Contemporary calf, smooth spines divided into compartments by triple gilt fillets, each compartment tooled in gilt with a swan among reeds, red morocco lettering pieces gilt “WEALTH OF NATIONS,” volume numbers gilt within dark green onlaid roundels; plain endpapers.

Smith first published the Wealth of Nations in London in 1776, and Strahan and Cadell kept it in print through eleven London editions. This 1806 edition brought the book back to Edinburgh, where Smith had lived and worked. William Creech had co-published Smith’s work with Strahan and Cadell since 1776. Creech and his partners set the text in three octavo volumes, a format later Edinburgh editions followed to 1820 (Tribe 90). Two additions frame the text. The first is a Life of the Author. The second is translated from Germain Garnier, whose French translation of the Wealth of Nations appeared in 1802: a short view of Smith’s doctrine set against Quesnay and the physiocrats, followed by a method for working through Smith’s long argument. For English readers it was an early account of how the book was received in France.

⁂ “The first and greatest classic of modern economic thought” (cf. PMM 221). Printing and the Mind of Man divides economic thought before 1800 into two phases: a mercantilist phase, “based not so much on a doctrine as on a system of practice”, and a second phase which held that the individual had the right to be unimpeded in economic activity, of which the Wealth of Nations was “the first major expression”. Smith begins with labour as the source of a nation’s wealth and the division of labour as the measure of its productivity, moves through wages, profit, rent and stock, and ends with a history of economic development and “a definitive onslaught on the mercantile system”. In PMM’s judgement, “where the political aspects of human rights had taken two centuries to explore, Smith’s achievement was to bring the study of economic aspects to the same point in a single work.”

Spines bright, the gilt swan tools and fillets clear. Head and tail caps chipped with small losses on all three volumes. The volume I roundel is half lost, and its label rubbed with a small loss. The joints of volume II are split with the spine leather lifting along its length; it remains attached with hinges still intact and connected. Boards scuffed and scratched, corners bumped and worn through. Internally, foxing to the preliminary leaves and titles; light browning along the gutter of the volume I title; text otherwise clean. 

A complete set of the 1806 Edinburgh Wealth of Nations, with Garnier’s commentary, in a period calf binding with handsome gilt spines.