Adam Smith 1723-1790

Adam SMITH 1723-1790

Biographical Note

Smith was baptised in Kirkcaldy, Fife, on 5 June 1723, the posthumous only child of Adam Smith and Margaret Douglas. Having attended Kirkcaldy High School, he then studied at Glasgow University and, as a Snell Fellow, the University of Oxford. In 1750 he became Professor of Logic at Glasgow, moving to the chair of Moral Philosophy in 1752. His influential Theory of Moral Sentiments was published in London in 1759. Between 1764 and 1766 he travelled in France and Switzerland as tutor to the young third Duke of Buccleuch. In Kirkcaldy and London between 1766 and 1777, he then settled permanently in Edinburgh, when in January 1778 he became a Commissioner of Customs and of the Salt Duties for Scotland, and lived there until his death on 17 July 1790. His most important publication, An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations, was issued in 1776.

Books

By the time of his death, Smith’s library numbered just over 1800 items in about 3,200 volumes. It was wide-ranging and up-to-date in representing the latest in intellectual progress, but also had a number of older items, some very distinguished, like Copernicus’s De revolutionibus of 1543. Smith was proud of the appearance of his library, telling William Smellie, ‘I am a beau in nothing but my books’, and there are some distinguished bindings, old and contemporary. The subject of theology is singularly lacking.

After his death, the library was inherited by his cousin, David Douglas, a lawyer and later a Scottish judge. Eventually it was split equally between Douglas’s two surviving children, both daughters. Over time one portion was mostly sold or donated and is scattered world-wide: there are notable groups in Tokyo and Belfast. The other half was very largely kept together and donated to New College Library, Edinburgh, the main educational establishment of the Free Church of Scotland, in the late nineteenth century. New College eventually became part of the Faculty of Divinity of the University of Edinburgh, and in 1972 the Smith books were transferred to the University’s main library, where they remain.

The library has been the subject of various catalogues and studies. James Bonar issued a catalogue in 1894, with a much expanded second edition in 1932. Over time, this was shown to be an imperfect record, and the latest full catalogue is by Professor Hiroshi Mizuta: Adam Smith’s Library, a Catalogue (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000).

Characteristic Markings

One or two items in the library bear his writing (e.g. noting the contents of pamphlet volumes, or the name of a donor) but most are only identified by his simple and rather crude book label, which is ubiquitous. If there is no label, then an item’s Smith provenance must be in doubt, unless there is other external or historical evidence of his ownership.

Sources

• Mizuta, Hiroshi, Adam Smith’s Library: a Catalogue (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000).
• Winch, David ‘Smith, Adam (bap. 1723, d. 1790), moral philosopher and political economist’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
• Information from Murray Simpson.