I made significant revisions to one of the subsections of my “Adam Smith in Smith in Love” paper. In particular, I recently stumbled upon a well-researched and detailed book by Alain Alcouffe and Philippe Massot-Bordenave with the title “Adam Smith in Toulouse and Occitania: The Unknown Years,” which was published earlier this year. Their research sheds a lot of new light on one of the pieces of evidence I review in my paper. For more details, see updated blog post below.
Update (10/28): I made significant revisions to this part of my “Adam Smith in Love” paper.
Previously, I described three pieces of evidence regarding Adam Smith’s love life: (i) an obscure but intriguing footnote in Dugald Stewart’s 1793 biography of Smith’s life and writings (Exhibit A), (ii) a letter dated July 14, 1784 addressed to Professor Stewart (Exhibit B), and (iii) a brief anecdote by Henry Mackenzie, a prominent Scottish lawyer and writer (Exhibit C). I recently stumbled upon a fourth piece of evidence, a possible “smoking gun” consisting of a long letter dated 18 September 1766. Unlike the first few proofs we have introduced into evidence thus far, this correspondence is not only from Adam Smith’s own lifetime; it is addressed to Adam Smith himself and to his pupil, Henry Scott, the future Third Duke of Buccleuch! (At the time this contemporaneous…
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prior probability 