Adam Smith (1723-1790) is perceived, through his best-known book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, as the founder of economics as a science. His thought has shaped modern ideas about the market economy and the role of the state in relation to it. Yet Smith needs to be recognized as more than this, as a man of letters, moralist, historian, and critic, as well as an economist, if we are to get full value for his ideas and perspectives in contemporary applications. Ian Simpson Ross is the biographer of Lord Kames, Smith's patron, and of the Scottish poet William Dunbar, and has edited, with E C Mossner, Smith's correspondence for the Glasgow edition of his works. In this, the first full-scale biography of Adam Smith for a hundred years, Ross brings his subject in to historical light as a thinker and author by examining his family circumstance, education, career, and social and intellectual circle, including David Hume and Francois Quesnay, revealed through his correspondence, archival documents, the reports of contemporaries, and the record of his publications. Readers will meet Smith as a student at a lively Glasgow and sleepy Oxford; freelance lecturer in rhetoric; innovative university teacher; tutor travelling abroad with a Duke; acclaimed political economist; policy advisor to governments during and after the American crisis; and finally, if paradoxically in view of his tenets, a Commissioner of Customs coping with the free traders in the smuggling business. This is the life of a Scottish moral philosopher whose legacy of thought concerns and affects us all. Its lively and informed account will appeal to those interested in the social and intellectual milieu of the eighteenth century, and in scottish history. Economists and philosophers will find much to read about the history of their disciplines, supported by full documentation.

Ian Simpson Ross' profile page

Ian Simpson Ross is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of British Columbia. With E. C. Mossner he is the editor of The Correspondence of Adam Smith (OUP, 1987). He is also the author of: Lord kames and the Scotland of His Day (OUP, 1972) and William Dunbar (E.J. Brill, 1981)

'Rich harvest which Ross's painstaking and authoritative exploration has gathered ... he gives us a marvellously detailed account of the complex man that lay behind the complex works. It is as a biographer, rather than as a critic, that he excels ... a book that will be read by serious scholars, and consulted by the rest of us, to equal profit.' The Scotsman

'A full-scale biography of Adam Smith ... the first in a century.' Library Journal

'Rich harvest which Ross's painstaking and authoritative exploration has gathered ... he gives us a marvellously detailed account of the complex man that lay behind the complex works. It is as a biographer rather than a as a critic, that he excels ... a book that will be read by serious scholars, and consulted by the rest of us, to equal profit.' The Scotsman

'The definitive biography for modern times ... there is always the pleasure of digging up, then showing off facts so far undiscovered, and Ross has certainly been diligent in that respect. He clears up many small obscurities, rounds out accounts of various matters in greater detail and sometimes introduces material of genuine importance.' Glasgow Herald

'A full-scale biography based largely on Smith's letters ... an impressive scholarly achievement and belongs in any serious economics collection.' Booklist

With a minimum of pedantic intrusions, Ross makes a masterly job not only of putting Smith in the context of his turbulent times, but also of shedding light on his humane subject's wide-ranging contributions to Western thought.

'Mr Ross's achievements in this biography is to have revealed the intellectual sources for his work while reminding us of the practicality, modesty, generosity and essential kindness of this great man.' The Economist

'Mr Ross's achievement in this biography is to have revealed the intellectual sources for his work while reminding us of the practicality, modesty, generosity and essential kindness of this great man.' The Economist

'Now, with the help of Ian Simpson Ross's The Life of Adam Smith the first Smith biography in 100 years - we have a more rounded portrait of the man ... it is a good introduction to the world of the Scottish Enlightenment.' Wall Street Journal

'Ross has done well to draw Smith out of the beady embrace of the economists, and present him as a philosopher of his times ... Ross covers his later years with admirable sympathy and even tenderness.' London Review of Books