Because this essay addresses questions I think have been raised but not fully explored elsewhere, it may be best to begin with a careful explanation of my title. Part of my purpose here is simply to deepen and complicate our understanding of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations by tracing the broad outlines of Smith's reputation in British thought and culture between the publication of the first edition of the Wealth of Nations in March 1776 and the appearance of the first edition of Malthus's Essay on Population, which appeared anonymously in June 1798. Well before his identification a generation later as the founding figure of the tradition of British political economy, Smith stood by himself as a thinker whose importance was seen as incontestable. Yet he was also followed in various directions. We know that both the revolt of Britain's North American colonies and the French Revolution had something to do with the mutability of Smith's reputation. But so too did another development largely overlooked by students of his career: the sweeping transformation of the British publishing business that had taken place over the course of his lifetime and was to continue into the nineteenth century.

The broader issue that lies behind the observations I want to make is one hinted at in the first part of my title – namely, to ask how Smith's reputation in the late eighteenth century sheds light on the larger question of how and why the Wealth of Nations initially came to exercise authority in British affairs.