The Life of Adam Smith by Ian Simpson Ross (review)

HUMANITIES 215 the Last, demonstrated, in 1753, the dependence of the domestic circle on larger systems of economic exchange - and its subsequent collapse. The achievement ofthis smallvolume is considerable. Inclear language, unladen withjargon but not sacrificing sophistication of thought, Schellenberg convincingly describes not isolated, flawed works, but a significant group of fictions that represented one of the ways that the novel could have developed. I particularly enjoyed seeing a strong defence of a personal favourite, Sir Charles Grandison, now sadly out of print once again. The faults of this study are those of omission. Readers familiar onlywith the main line of eighteenth-century fiction, who must certainly be among the book's ideal readership, would probably appreciate outlines of some of the least known of the novels discussed. I also wanted more analysis at some points, such as the relationship between Sarah Fielding's life, her status as author, and David Simple, a subject broached but not pursued at the end of chapter 2. At the end of the book, I felt that Schellenberg could have more fully explained the decline and fall of the novel of the domestic circle, particularly as her own structure suggests such a linear plotting. Finally, the book retains more of the dissertation than one might have liked. The chapters are jOined at the ends and, as I have suggested, have an element of plot to them; however, a greater sense of unity, and further interesting analysis, could havebeen provided by pursuing throughout the book the philosophical expressions of community versus individualism' with which the book begins. In spite of such minor flaws, The Conversational Circle is an important contribution to the ongoing debate over the rise of the novel, both suggesting something of why these novels failed to appeal to later generations, and going a long way to reclaiming them for ours. It should be required reading for all students of mid-century fiction, and for those interested in novelistic expressions of a debate between consensus and conflict, community and the individual, that infused English culture of the time and whose effects remain with us today. (ST'EPHANIE FYSH) Ian Simpson Ross. The Life ofAdam Smith Clarendon Press 1995. xxviii, 496. $51.95 Ian Simpson Ross's LifeofAdam Smith comes to us at the right time. The last full-scale life was published a hundred years ago. In the past several decades, moreover, interest inSmith's ideas has experienced an unforeseen resurgence, as faith in the market has swept across the globe. It is high time that we had a new full-length life of the man who started it all. Ross has not found an important source of new materials - no diary or stack of letters - that would lead to radical reinterpretations of important events or ideas. Instead, he relies mainly on the prodigious output of the 216 LETTERS IN CANADA 1996 Adam Smith industry. The Smitruans have left no stone unturned: they havef among other thingsf collated the lecture notes taken by his students and traced their subsequent careersf catalogued the books in his library, and analysed statistically his decisions as a customs official. Ross combines this array of facts with an encyclopedic knowledge of the history, politics, and even architecture of Europe during the Scottish enlightenment. We may not know the thoughts that Adam Smith had as he walked the streets of Edinburgh, but through Ross's eyes we can see the same buildings that Smith saw. The result is a remarkably complete story of the life of a man who, outwardly at least, lived an uneventful, although highly successful, academic life, two centuries ago. The biggest difference between Ross's biography and earlier ones is that Ross succeeds in providing a better explanation of how Smith wrote the Wealth ofNations. I don't mean by this how he worked, what time he got up in the moming, what sort of notes he took (apparently he relied, perhaps too much, on a superb memory), and so on. UnfortunatelYf although we have some details, much of this story is still hidden. Rather, I mean the puzzle of how a lecturer on the history of science, belles-lettres, law, and ethics, and the...