Below is an excerpt from Chapter 4 (“Das Ambossproblem”) of my forthcoming survey of open Adam Smith problems with Salim Rashid (again, footnotes are below the fold):

“… The Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments were not the only books Adam Smith was working on during his lifetime. The Scottish philosopher also had ‘two other great works upon the anvil’ at the time of his death. (See Corr. No. 248 in Mossner and Ross’s edition of The Correspondence of Adam Smith.) By Smith’s own account, one work was ‘a philosophical history of literature, philosophy, poetry, and eloquence’ and was thus most likely based on a series of lectures that Smith gave when he was a professor at Glasgow (1751-63).[1] Although Smith never published this work, two centuries later two volumes of a handwritten manuscript titled ‘Notes of Dr. Smith’s Rhetorick Lectures’ were discovered by a professor of English literature, John M. Lothian, who published an edition of these lecture notes under the title we know them by today, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres Delivered in the University of Glasgow by Adam Smith, Reported by a Student in 1762-63, or ‘LRBL’ for short.[2]

“The other great work that Smith was working on during his lifetime was ‘a book on the theory and history of law and government.’ Although this second book never saw the light of day, it was most likely based on a series of lectures on jurisprudence that Smith gave when he was a professor at Glasgow. Eventually, two sets of jurisprudence lecture notes, now referred to as LJ(A) and LJ(B), were discovered by subsequent generations of Smith scholars. Most scholars now agree that LJ(A) corresponds to Smith’s law lectures during the 1762-63 academic year, while LJ(B) relates to law lectures that were delivered—either by Smith himself, or his hand-picked substitute Thomas Young—during the 1763-64 academic year.[3]

“Before proceeding, one also wonders about Smith’s original lectures on logic, which he had delivered at the University of Glasgow during the 1751-52 academic term, his first year as a professor at Glasgow. What happened to those lecture notes? Curiously, as far as we can tell, Smith makes no further reference to his logic lectures. Was logic the one subject that failed to capture Smith’s boundless curiosity? Either way, the remaining sets of his surviving lecture notes—LRBL, LJ(A), and LJ(B)—may shed some light on Smith’s ‘two other great works on the anvil’, but at the same time serious pesky questions persist about the provenance and accuracy of these student notes. We still don’t know, for example, who wrote them,[4] and we also have no way knowing for sure just how accurate those notes are. After all, Smith’s theory of jurisprudence or his views on rhetoric may have changed over time. But the most important question is this: why did Smith destroy the manuscripts of his two other great works?”

[1] In fact, Smith may have lectured on rhetoric as early as 1748, back when he was still a private lecturer during his first Edinburgh period (1748-51). See, e.g., Bryce 1983.

[2] See Bryce 1983, p. 1.

[3] See Meek 1978, p. 3. Regarding the possibility that it was a substitute (Thomas Young) who delivered Smith’s law lectures during the 1763-64 academic year, see ibid., pp. 8-9.

[4] See Bryce 1983, pp. 1-7, regarding the provenance of LRBL; Meek 1978, pp. 1-13 re: LJ(A) & LJ (B). There is, however, some evidence to suggest that “both LJ(A) and the main text of LRBL were written by the same person.” Meek 1978, p. 11.