Sweden Introduced to the Wealth of Nations
[SMITH, Adam.]
ADLERSPARRE, Georg, et al., editors. Läsning i blandade ämnen. Första [– Femte och Sista] Årgången. Stockholm, Henrik A. Nordström, 1797–1801.
Fifty parts bound in nine vols, small 8vo; complete with 5 folding tables, a folding engraved map, and 3 folding engraved plates of agricultural implements; woodcut vignettes on divisional titles; deaccessioned library stamp to the front free endpaper in each vol.; slight dampstaining to the third vol., else a very good, clean copy in contemporary blue paper-covered boards, extremities rubbed, gilt-lettered labels to spines.
Added to your basket:
ADLERSPARRE, Georg, et al., editors. Läsning i blandade ämnen. Första [– Femte och Sista] Årgången.
First edition of all fifty parts of the Swedish literary periodical Läsning i blandade ämnen, containing over 200 pages of passages from various sections of the Wealth of Nations, making it the first opportunity for Swedish speakers to study Adam Smith. Georg Sartorius’s abridgement of the Wealth of Nations, the Handbuch der Staatswirthschaft …, had appeared in a Swedish translation in 1800 but, according to Tribe, a complete translation has never appeared.
There are many other translations from English in the periodical, including biographies of Samuel Johnson and William Blackstone, and poetry of Alexander Pope and Thomas Gray.
Vanderblue, p. 32; not in Tribe; OCLC lists copies at Yale, Minnesota, and Texas. On the influence of Smith in Sweden, see Torbjörn Vallinder, ‘University Professors and Amateur Writers: The Wealth of Nations in Sweden up to 1990’, in Cheng-chung Lai’s Adam Smith Across Nations (OUP, 2000).