Human Documents of Adam Smith's Time

Pike, E. Royston

ISBN 10: 0049421190 / ISBN 13: 9780049421196

Published by George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1974, 1974

About this Item

Soft Cover. Very Good. First. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. ISBN:0 04 942119 0. Unwin University Books. Slight edgewear, price sticker shadow on front endpaper, price markered out on rear cover. 253 pages.

Seller Inventory # 003303

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Human Documents of Adam Smith's Time
• Publisher: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1974
• Publication Date: 1974
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0049421190
• ISBN 13: 9780049421196
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Seller catalogs:
  • Europe

About this title

Synopsis

First published in 1974, this is not a ‘life’ of the founder of the science of economics, although it opens with a biographical sketch; nor is it an analysis of The Wealth of Nations , although it contains numerous pointed quotations from it. Rather, it is a presentation of Adam Smith against his background of time and place, eighteenth century Britain on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. The first chapter consists of ‘documents’ illustrating life in ‘low life’ be it noted, which is not to say that it is all sordidness and debauchery and crime (though there is plenty of that in evidence) but life as it was lived by the ‘lower orders’, whom Adam Smith gratefully recognises as ‘the great body of the people’. The last chapter describes the Scotland that Adam Smith knew – Kirkaldy, Glasgow and Edinburgh.