ABSTRACT
I am a book collector (and also a book reader). On my shelves I have a work that I bought when I was young and could ill-afford it: a beautiful 1799 calf-bound three-volume edition of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. This particular copy, which has been a source of continuous intellectual and aesthetic pleasure over the years, has a history. It once belonged to Richard Brinsley Sheridan, not only one of the most important dramatists in the British pantheon but also a prominent politician who sat for many years in the House of Commons. The fact that Sheridan immersed himself in this new field of study demonstrates that economics, or political economy – an academic pursuit that Thomas Carlyle was later unforgettably to call the dismal science – was on the agenda of public policy makers soon after 1776, when Adam Smith’s book first appeared. (My copy is from the third edition.)
Public interest in economics accelerated during the nineteenth century. This had much to do with the enormous changes that were taking place in most parts of the world at that time: the intensification of national rivalries, colonialism, the vast increase in domestic and international trade, mass emigration from the old world to the new, seminal scientific discoveries and – most important of all – an unparalleled growth in wealth in the economically most developed countries: Britain, Germany, the United States and Japan. Industrial efficiency through economies of scale was making its presence felt for the first time.
