Editor’s Note

This edition prints the text from which our Korean translation was made: the edition printed in Dublin for J. Beatty and C. Jackson in 1777. Its title page calls it “the sixth edition,” but that is the Dublin booksellers’ own count. The text is that of Smith’s fourth edition (London, 1774), before his last revision of 1790. Readers who know the book from modern editions should expect a different shape: there are six parts, not seven; the system of moral philosophy is Part VI, not Part VII; and the part “Of the Character of Virtue,” added in 1790, is not here. Smith’s essay on the origin of languages, printed with the book since the third edition of 1767, follows as an appendix. Smith’s own footnotes are kept.

Eighteenth-century spelling is kept as printed (compleat, chearful, intirely, œconomy, shewing). Headings have been regularized (“Part I, Section I”; “Chapter I”), and the page numbers that the transcription had run into the text have been removed. Ten words misread or misprinted in the source, most of them through the long s (ſ), have been corrected: sail (for “fail”), restraining (“retraining”), existence (“exigence”), stuffed (“fluffed”), wasted (“wailed”), fit up (“sit up”), fashion (“faction”), separation (“reparation”), master (“matter”), and task (“talk”). Other doubtful readings, where the printed word makes some sense, are left as printed.

Removed from the source: the transcription’s header and license, the title page and table of contents, and all distributor notices.