Maggs Bros.

An attractive, wide-margined copy of the first Swedish translation of Sartorius’s influential abridgement of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, the earliest general abridgement of Smith’s classic work and one of the principal sources for the dissemination of Smithian doctrine throughout northern Europe, originally published in German in 1796 under the title Handbuch der Staatswirthschaft.

‘Sartorius’s indisputable contribution to economic science consists in the fact that he was one of the first German professors to grasp the significance of Adam Smith’s system. At a time when German academic and political life was still dominated by the cameralist tradition, he enthusiastically undertook the propagation of the Smithian doctrine. His selection revealed a capacity to present the principles and implications of laissez faire in a manner suited to the tastes and needs of German students’ (Encycolaedia of the Social Sciences).

The present Swedish translation of Sartorius’s abridgement was undertaken by the jurist Johan Holmbergson (1764-1840) for use in his academic lectures. A series of extracts from the Wealth of Nations had been published in Swedish translation in the previous year, appearing in the periodical Lasning i Blandade in 1799, but the Holmbergson’s translation of Sartorius represented the first major presentation of Smith’s ideas in Sweden.

Tribe, 73; Kress, B-4270.