Life of Adam Smith.

First edition. 8vo. xv, [1], 449, [1], [2, publisher's advertisements] pp. Original brown buckram, spine lettered in gilt, edges untrimmed (internally clean and almost entirely unopened; spine slightly rubbed at head with short split to head of front joint, the hinge intact and holding firmly, a very good copy indeed). London, Macmillan & Co.

One of the major biographies of Adam Smith, written by the Scottish journalist and editor John Rae (1845-1915).

'The first seriously updated biography of Smith appeared, almost exactly 100 years after Smith’s old colleague Dugald Stewart assayed the same elusive subject matter circa 1793. Rae was given access by institutions and individuals to many original materials for the first time, and incorporated data earlier uncovered by Henry Peter Brougham. Consequently, a far more complete, focused, and nuanced picture of Smith’s life and work emerges. The accurate and presumed desired result of Rae’s detailed portrait of Smith is a much more complicated personality than earlier suggested by Stewart, who had in fact gone to some length in emphasizing his friend’s many-sided interests and diverse academic associations. Above all, Rae contextualizes, delineates, and frames Smith’s philosophic theories within the late 18th century milieu in which the latter lived, a task for which Stewart, despite all of his ability and knowledge, lacked the historical distance to effectively accomplish, even had he wanted to' (Farina, The Afterlife of Adam Smith, p. 106).

Stock Code: 243412