IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-0-230-51119-4_31.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Why Smith ‘Retired’

In: Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy

Author

Listed:
  • Gavin Kennedy

Abstract

It is easy to miss the fact that by 1777 Smith had ‘retired’ from active research and serious academic work. In 1780 Smith explained his retirement in a letter: Upon my return to Britain [1766] I retired to a small Town in Scotland the place of my nativity, where I continued to live for six years in great tranquillity, and almost complete retirement. … In the Spring of 1773 a proposal, which many of my friends thought very advantageous was made to me to go abroad a second time. The discussion of this proposal obliged me to go to London … For four years after this London was my principal residence, where I finished and published my Book. I had returned to my old retirement at Kirkcaldy … when by the interest of the Duke of Buccleugh, I was appointed to my present Office; which though it requires a good deal of attendance is both easy and honourable.1 If Smith had gone abroad in 1773 he might not have finished Wealth of Nations! As it was he took the post as Commissioner of Customs in Edinburgh in 1778, effectively retired, and did not finish Jurisprudence.

Suggested Citation

  • Gavin Kennedy, 2005. "Why Smith ‘Retired’," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy, chapter 31, pages 136-140, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-51119-4_31
    DOI: 10.1057/9780230511194_31
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-51119-4_31. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.