An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

London is the true first - Smith wrote in English and Strahan and Cadell printed it; there is no earlier foreign or original-language edition. The first American edition is Philadelphia: printed for Thomas Dobson, 1789, three volumes octavo, reprinted from the fourth London edition (Evans 31196); it is a separate Americana collecting point, not the first, and note that Dobson's set is the first American edition of vols. 1 and 3 but the second American edition of vol. 2. The census figure of "about 500 copies" for the first edition is NOT confirmed and should not be published: the 500-copy figure that surfaces in the trade attaches to the 1778 second edition, and no reliable first-edition print run was documented in the sources consulted - what is documented is that the first edition sold out in six months.