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206.: To [THOMAS CADELL] - 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.


206.

To [THOMAS CADELL]

MS., Yale University Libr., unpubl.

Canongate, Edinburgh, 25 Oct. [1780]1

Dear Sir

May I beg the favour of you, immediately after receiving this letter to send three copies of the second edition of My book concerning the Wealth of nations to Mr Peter Anker, Consul General of Denmark;2 writing upon the blank leaf of one of them to Mr Anker from the Authour; of another, To Mr Holt3 from the Authour, and of the third to Mr Dreby4 from the Authour. Mr Dreby has lately translated me into Danish5 These copies must be handsomely bound and Guilded. I am afraid I am not only your best, but almost your only customer for this second Edition. Let me know, however, how this matter goes on.

So long ago as the year 1767, sometime in the month of march, a few days before I left London, I bought of you a copy of Andersons History of Commerce.6 You happened not to have it in your own shop but you procured it for me from some of your Neighbours. In this copy I lately discovered an Imperfection of which John Balfour wrote to you sometime ago. If you could get this imperfection supplied, you would oblige me greatly. I ever am Dear Sir

Most faithfully and affectionately yours

Adam Smith

[1 ]The year ‘1760’ at the end of the letter is an error, for it obviously belongs with the Letters 208 and 209, dated 26 Oct. 1780 and addressed to Holt and Anker.

[2 ]Karsten and Peter Anker (1744–1832), sons of a Norwegian timber merchant, travelled to Britain in 1760, and were in Glasgow in 1762 when they met Adam Smith. They were in his company again in Toulouse in 1764 when he was writing WN.

[3 ]Andreas Holt (1729–84), tutor to the Ankers, then Danish civil servant, head of the Norwegian Secretariat of the Economic and Trade Department, and finally a State Councillor.

[4 ]Frants Dræbye (1740–1814), tutor to the sons of a Norwegian merchant, James Collett, visited England with them 1773–6; trans. WN into Danish when he was head of the Norwegian Secretariat of the Economic and Trade Department in succession to Holt. The Ankers and Holt probably persuaded him to do the translating.

[5 ]Undersøgelser om National–Volstands Natur og Aarsag af Doctor Adam Smith . . . Af det Engelske oversat og med nogle anmærkninger oplyst af F. Dræbye (Copenhagen, 1779–80). To the second volume was added Gov. Pownall’s letter of 1776.

[6 ]See Letter 102 addressed to Cadell, dated 25 Mar. 1767.