An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (four volumes) by SMITH, Adam - 1828

Edinburgh and London: Adam Black, and William Tait; And Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1828. Very Good. FIRST McCULLOCH EDITION. Four volumes. 8vos, pp. [xlii], [vi, incl. adverts for the third and fourth editions, and Contents], xcvi, [ii, additional Vol. I half-title], 420 (peculiar numbering, due to McCulloch's additional sections; with adverts and Contents pages perhaps inserted in the incorrect section?) + frontis portrait; pp. viii, [506]; pp. x, [508]; pp. [viii], 634 (incl. index). Bound, unassumingly, in tan buckram, spines lettered in gilt. Edges speckled red. Spines grubby, boards scuffed with some scoring, extremities rubbed and pushed. Top edges dusty. Pink 'John P. Gray & Son, Bookbinders, Cambridge' tickets to bottom edges of front pastedowns. Pen underlining to 'A Life of the Author' in the first vol. and very occasionally to other vols., some pencil scoring and infrequent notes to rest of the set, including pencil notes to rear pastedowns in all vols; occasional grubby fingerprints and dog-earing. Vol I.: repair to closed tear to leading edge of title page and to losses at top corners of pp. 359-362 (no loss of text); Vol. II: nicks to fore-edge and short closed tear (repaired by PO) to top of half-title; Vol. III: top corners bruised, a little creasing to fore-edge, closed tear to top margin of pp. 475-6 (no text loss). Else, internally, clean, tight and bright. A pleasing, if functionally cased, set of Smith's magnum opus in four volumes, which was a best-seller for McCulloch (ODNB). First published in 1776, and with five editions appearing in Smith's lifetime, McCulloch's new edition reprints the fourth edition of 1786, 'being the last that was revised by the author' (Editor's Preface). It includes 'Sketch of the Life of Dr. Smith' (abridged from Dugald Stewart's memoir, with a few additional 'remarks, and some facts gleaned from other sources'), an 'Introductory Discourse, Notes, and Supplemental Dissertations,' which are 'chiefly intended to point out such changes as may since have occurred in any of the material facts or circumstances to which he [Smith] alludes' ('Editor's Preface'). The Scottish economist and leader of the Ricardian school of economics from 1823, John Ramsay McCulloch (1879-1864) was appointed the first Professor of Political Economy at the University of London in the same year as this publication, 1828. He was also a co-founder and early editor of The Scotsman (1817-1821). A long-standing Cambridge fixture at 10 Green Street, John P. Gray and his eldest son Arthur Beales Gray � 'Artistic & General Bookbinders' � were binders by appointment to Cambridge University Library and the Union Society.