David Stevens

Adam Smith › Timeline

Adam Smith, 1723–2026

The life, the books, and the afterlife. One line per event, from the documents.

  1. 1723January: his father, comptroller of customs at Kirkcaldy, dies. 5 June: the son is baptised. The birth date was never recorded.
  2. 1737Enters the University of Glasgow at fourteen.
  3. 1740Wins a Snell Exhibition to Balliol College, Oxford, where he finds the professors have stopped teaching.
  4. 1748Begins public lectures in Edinburgh, the argument of the book given out loud for the first time.
  5. 17519 January: elected Professor of Logic at Glasgow, aged twenty-seven.
  6. 1755Puts his claim to his own ideas on record: statesmen should leave her alone, meaning nature.
  7. 1759The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
  8. 1764Leaves Glasgow as tutor to the young Duke of Buccleuch. 5 July, Toulouse: I have begun to write a book in order to pass away the time.
  9. 1766Paris, among Quesnay and the économistes. Returns to Britain.
  10. 1767Kirkcaldy: six years writing at his mother's house, with Hume across the water.
  11. 1770Famine in Bengal under the East India Company.
  12. 1772June: the Ayr Bank stops payment. Smith describes it in the book without naming it.
  13. 1773April: leaves for London with the manuscript, telling Hume to destroy his other papers if he dies.
  14. 17769 March: The Wealth of Nations goes on sale in London, two volumes, thirty-six shillings. 25 August: Hume dies.
  15. 177830 January: appointed Commissioner of Customs for Scotland. A week later he burns his own contraband linen.
  16. 1780January: memorandum to William Eden arguing for moderate duties in place of prohibitions.
  17. 178423 May: his mother dies, in her ninetieth year. The third edition of The Wealth of Nations.
  18. 1786Eden signs a commercial treaty with France, cutting duties on both sides.
  19. 1787Elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow.
  20. 1790Sixth edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. July: his manuscripts are burned. 17 July: dies at Panmure House, Edinburgh.
  21. 1793Dugald Stewart's memoir gives the world a safe, unpolitical Smith.
  22. 1846The Corn Laws are repealed. Both sides of the debate quote him.
  23. 1896A student's notes of his Glasgow lectures are published, showing the economics already worked out in the 1760s.
  24. 1948The invisible hand enters the world's most widely used economics textbook and becomes a doctrine.
  25. 1976Bicentenary. The Glasgow Edition begins to put all of Smith into print properly.
  26. 1982His portrait appears on a necktie worn by members of the Reagan administration.
  27. 200713 March: the first Scot on a Bank of England note, the £20, with a pin factory. Withdrawn in 2022.
  28. 2026The 250th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations.

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