Turning to Adam Smith Ian Simpson Ross Oxford University Press, 1995, 495 pp.

The Glasgow edition of the works and correspondence of Adam Smith, published by Oxford University Press since 1976, must be rated among the great editorial enterprises of the 20th century as far as political economy is concerned. The edition is now complete after the publication of the second (and last) associated volume devoted to the life of Adam Smith. Ian Simpson Ross's biographical work is the object of the present paper. Ross's book is discussed in connection with the ongoing debate on Smithian political economy. It is the purpose of this paper to show in what ways this biography can help readers of Smith to bring some of the main issues of the debate into proper focus.A preliminary draft of this paper was presented at the first conference of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought in Marseilles, France, February 27-March 2, 1997.