ABSTRACT
First, I shall outline certain essentials relating to the life of Adam Smith in Kirkcaldy (22 years), Glasgow (15 years) and Edinburgh (15 years), his main places of residence.Although he spent most of his life in Scotland, he also spent some years and months visiting Paris, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Geneva and London. There are five serious biographies of Adam Smith, of which Professor Dugald
Stewart wrote the first. He knew Smith personally, as a family friend through his father, Professor Michael Stewart, who was a student at Glasgow with Adam Smith. After Smith died in 1790, Dugald Stewart read the eulogy to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1793. It was published in 1795 by Smith’s literary executors, Joseph Black and James Hutton, and was reproduced in many nineteenth-century editions of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations; it remains in print today.2 John Rae wrote the second biography, Life of Adam Smith (1895).3 Rae bene-
fited from the scant surviving correspondence to and from Adam Smith. He also accessed Adam Smith’s papers archived at Glasgow University. His was the standard full biography of Smith until 1995, although various derivative, small volumes appeared in the nineteenth century that contained nothing new.4
