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177A.: To WILLIAM STRAHAN - Adam Smith, Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence Vol. 6 Correspondence of Adam Smith [1740]

Edition used:

Correspondence of Adam Smith, ed. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross, vol. VI of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987).

Part of: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 7 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


177A.

To WILLIAM STRAHAN

Earlier draft, 1st para. scored through: Letters of David Hume to William Strahan, ed. G. Birkbeck Hill (Oxford, 1888), 354.

You are certainly right in publishing the new Edition of Mr Hume’s works before you publish the dialogues. They might prevent the sale of this Edition; and it is not impossible that they may hereafter [affect] the sale of another. I am still uneasy about the clamour which I foresee they will excite, and could . . .

I am much obliged to you for so readily agreeing to print the Life together with my addition separate from the Dialogues.1 I even flatter myself that this arrangement will contribute not only to my quiet, but to your interest. The clamour against the Dialogues, if published first, might for some time hurt the sale of the new edition of his works;2 and when the clamour has a little subsided the dialogues may hereafter occasion a quicker sale of another edition.

[1 ]See Letter 173 from Strahan, dated 16 Sept. 1776.

[2 ]The Dialogues caused no uproar, but Letter 178 addressed to Strahan, dated 9 Nov. 1776, was violently attacked. See Letter 208 addressed to Andreas Holt, dated 26 Oct. 1780.