<P> The Wealth of Nations was the product of seventeen years of notes and earlier works, as well as an observation of conversation among economists of the time concerning economic and societal conditions during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and it took Smith some ten years to produce . The result, An Inquiry to the Wealth of Nations, was a treatise which sought to offer a practical application for reformed economic theory to replace the mercantilist and physiocratic economic theories that were becoming less relevant in the time of industrial progress and innovation . It provided the foundation for economists, politicians, mathematicians, biologists, and thinkers of all fields to build upon . Irrespective of historical influence, The Wealth of Nations represented a clear paradigm shift in the field of economics, comparable to Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica for physics, Antoine Lavoisier's Traité Élémentaire de Chimie for chemistry, or Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species for biology . </P> <P> Five editions of The Wealth of Nations were published during Smith's lifetime: in 1776, 1778, 1784, 1786 and 1789 . Numerous editions appeared after Smith's death in 1790 . To better understand the evolution of the work under Smith's hand, a team led by Edwin Cannan collated the first five editions . The differences were published along with an edited sixth edition in 1904 . They found minor but numerous differences (including the addition of many footnotes) between the first and the second editions, both of which were published in two volumes . The differences between the second and third editions, however, are major . In 1784, Smith annexed these first two editions with the publication of Additions and Corrections to the First and Second Editions of Dr. Adam Smith's Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, and he also had published the three - volume third edition of the Wealth of Nations, which incorporated Additions and Corrections and, for the first time, an index . Among other things, the Additions and Corrections included entirely new sections, particularly to Bk 4 Chs 4 & 5, and Bk 5 Ch 1, as well as an additional chapter (8),' Conclusion of the Mercantile System', in Bk 4 . </P> <P> The fourth edition, published in 1786, had only slight differences from the third edition, and Smith himself says in the Advertisement at the beginning of the book, "I have made no alterations of any kind ." Finally, Cannan notes only trivial differences between the fourth and fifth editions--a set of misprints being removed from the fourth and a different set of misprints being introduced . </P> <P> The first edition of the book sold out in six months . The printer William Strahan wrote on 12 April 1776 that David Hume had said that The Wealth of Nations required too much thought to be as popular as Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire . Strahan also wrote: "What you say of Mr. Gibbon's and Dr. Smith's book is exactly just . The former is the most popular work; but the sale of the latter, though not near so rapid, has been more than I could have expected from a work that requires much thought and reflection (qualities that do not abound among modern readers) to peruse to any purpose ." Gibbon wrote to Adam Ferguson on 1 April: "What an excellent work is that with which our common friend Mr. Adam Smith has enriched the public! An extensive science in a single book, and the most profound ideas expressed in the most perspicuous language". The review of the book in the Annual Register was probably written by Whig MP Edmund Burke . In 1791 the English radical Thomas Paine wrote in his Rights of Man that "Had Mr. Burke possessed talents similar to the author' On the Wealth of Nations,' he would have comprehended all the parts which enter into, and, by assemblage, form a constitution ." </P>

An inquiry into the wealth of nations sparknotes