Adam Smith

Archives and Special Collections holds a variety of early editions of Adam Smith's work, as well as notes and letters written to and from Adam Smith. These include:​

The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Sp Coll Mu40-d.10 London: 1759

The first edition of Adam Smith's first book, written while he was Professor of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow. This is a presentation copy from Adam Smith to Henry Home, Lord Kames. ​

Métaphysique de l'âme: ou, Théorie des sentimens moraux

Sp Coll RB 3834-3835 Paris: 1764

The first edition of the Theory into French, translated by Marc-Antoine Eidous, who had previously translated Hutcheson’s Inquiry into Beauty and Virtue. ​

Wealth of Nations

Sp Coll Mu6-y.20-21 (vol. 1 only on display) London: 1776 22

The first edition of Smith’s classic work. Published in 1776, this was the first text to tackle economic theory in a clear historical narrative. The library holds several editions of this work, including a copy of the fourth edition that belonged to the poet, Robert Burns.​

Juris Prudence or Notes from the lectures on justice, police, revenue, and arms delivered in the University of Glasgow by Adam Smith

Sp Coll MS Gen. 109 Manuscript: 1766

This text is a fair copy (made by a clerk), of a student’s notes of Smith’s lectures at Glasgow. There is evidence that the lectures on jurisprudence from which the original notes were taken were delivered in the academic year 1762-3 or in that portion of the session 1763-4 which preceded Smith’s departure from Glasgow.

The manuscript was published in 1896 with an introduction by Edwin Cannan. He demonstrated that the lectures contain much of the material later used in the Wealth of Nations.