Adam Smith: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations - Edited by William Playfair (Hardcover, Facsimile)

This is the first opportunity for modern scholars to have easy access to the first edited edition of The Wealth of Nations. Edited by William Playfair (the Scottish economist and inventor of the bar and pie-charts) and published in 1805, it is the first and most important early critical edition of Smith. Smith corrected his original 1776 text for the second edition in 1778, and made many corrections and additions to the third edition in 1784, as well as adding an index for the first time. (This index is reproduced in the Playfair edition). Adam Smith died in 1790. The eleventh or 'Playfair edition' was praised by Francis Ysidro Edgeworth for its 'acute criticism'. William Playfair wrote supplementary chapters and notes to Adam Smith's great work to discuss the issues which he thought Smith would have wanted to address, had he lived to see the effects of the French Revolution. There are valuable chapters on the momentous economic events of the 1790s. Playfair's chapters and notes are clearly marked as supplementary chapters and he has retained Adam Smith's exact text from the corrected, third edition.Playfair's edition of The Wealth of Nations is the first to apply economic history to Adam Smith's economic theory. The period between 1776 and 1805 saw an enormous development in Britain's wealth, the American and French inflations and the French Revolution. Playfair raised at least two issues which are still important today: How can free markets exist without political order? How can free markets survive deliberate monetary inflation by the government authority? They remain highly relevant for scholars and economists at the close of the twentieth century. Since Adam Smith we have experienced 220 years of repeated revolutions and inflations. The Wealth of Nations is one of the greatest works of economic thought and the Playfair edition is one of the most important critical editions.