The Glasgow Edition of the Works of Adam Smith

Reflecting Adam Smith’s wide learning and varied interests, these essays shed considerable light on his place in the Scottish Enlightenment. Included are histories of astronomy, ancient logic, and ancient physics; essays on the “imitative” arts and the affinity between music, dancing, and poetry; and a critical review of Samuel Johnson’s famous Dictionary, which Smith originally published in the Edinburgh Review…

Now complete in seven titles/eight volumes, this series is the first uniform collection of Adam Smith’s writings. The Glasgow edition is published in hardcover by Oxford University Press. The paperback edition is published by Liberty Fund.

First published in 1776, the year in which the American Revolution officially began, Smith’s Wealth of Nations sparked a revolution of its own. In it Smith analyzes the major elements of political economy, from market pricing and the division of labor to monetary, tax, trade, and other government policies that affect economic behavior. Throughout he offers seminal arguments for free…

Smith’s Lectures on Jurisprudence, originally delivered at the University of Glasgow in 1762–1763, presents his “theory of the rules by which civil government ought to be directed.” The chief purpose of government, according to Smith, is to preserve justice; and “the object of justice is security from injury.” The state must protect the individual’s right to his person, property, reputation,…