Adam Smith's Edinburgh

Just as you might associate Athens with philosophers, Florence with artists and Manhattan Beach with volleyball players, Edinburgh takes great pride in the talent and popularity of writers who have lived and worked there.

While walking on the Royal Mile, we spotted a sidewalk sign for the Book Lover’s Literary Tour that would meet by the Writer’s Museum, and my daughter Amy immediately insisted that she must take it. I joined her.

Interestingly, we passed within 50 yards of a statue of economist Adam Smith, whose brilliant and reality-transforming Wealth of Nations and other writings illuminated the path for the progression of Western Civilization. 

Dr. Watson and Holmes of CBS's "Elementary"

But this tour was not to be about non-fiction, even if the man leading the tour, Allan Foster, is himself primarily a non-fiction writer. I would argue, however, that the theories expounded by Adam Smith made international literary success possible. Actually, the fact that tourists from Australia, Denmark and, of course, the United States arrived in this distant land with money to spend on such a frivolous expedition is further proof of Smith’s theories.

In any case, the tour revealed many interesting stories about the birth of literary giants as we passed the primarily unmarked places where they found inspiration. Yes, there’s a small marker designating the restaurant where J. K. Rowling created Harry Potter, but you’d be unlikely to stumble upon it.

While in the 1700’s Adam Smith certainly could not have predicted technology that would subsequently be developed, his “invisible hand” of capitalism made it all possible to unfold: audio books, kindle downloads, motion pictures based on the novels, video sales and advertising giants making free viewing of the stories on television possible, supplementing massive printed book sales in mega-book stores and eBook sales over the internet around the world, or probably even a potential audience of people with the ability to read and enough disposable income to lap up individual copies, standing in line at Barnes & Noble with friends on the evening before release rather than waiting to borrow it a couple of days later or getting a free loan from the local public library (which Ben Franklin was pioneering in America during Smith’s lifetime) in a few weeks, 

I may not have read all of the Harry Potter books like Amy (in fact, I never read any of them, though I did see all the movies), but when I was in college, I read all of the Sherlock Holmes books (no, I wasn’t a contemporary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). On the tour, we learned of the genesis of some of the great characters in fiction, including Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.

When Arthur Conan Doyle was attending medical school at the University of Edinburgh, he became the assistant of Dr. Joseph Bell, who had an amazing ability to quickly and accurately diagnose patient maladies based on his keen observation of minute details of appearance in conjunction with the medical symptons.  

Sound like a familiar modus operandi? If not, watch one of the Sherlock Holmes movies starring Robert Downey, Jr., or the great TV series "Elementary."

"Fwendy" and Not Harry Potter

We also meandered past the pubs and publishing houses, hospitals and other haunts where Rowling, Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, J.M. Barrie and other famous authors found characters who became fictional stars more famous than their creators.

We heard many fascinating anecdotes, from how Barrie coined the name Wendy for the “fwendy” of his Peter Pan to how Sir Walter Scott hid his creation of tawdry popular novels to avoid besmirching his esteemed position as a dour-faced, wig-wearing lawyer in the very proper Edinburgh court, but it’s not my job to put Allan Foster out of his by telling all the stories he researched. You can go to Edinburgh and easily join the tour yourself.

The essence of Adam Smith’s economic philosophy is that individuals, pursuing their own self-interests and allowed to trade freely among themselves without coercion from government or other outside forces will create a marketplace and world of ever increasing abundance, as if guided by an invisible hand. If you’ve read many of my ramblings, you know I have no doubt that invisible hand is God’s, but whatever you choose to call that force, it is responsible for a man who enjoys literature being able to support his family by showing up outside the Writer’s Museum to lead a random group of strangers around Edinburgh whenever he puts his sign on the sidewalk. It’s a beautiful thing.

And, by the way, notice this article is Adam Smith’s Edinburgh, not Edinburgh’s Adam Smith. Allan Foster’s omission of Adam Smith could be justified even if Foster included non-fiction writers in his tour. While a monument to Adam Smith has his statue overseeing the free market hustle and bustle of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, Adam Smith was born in nearby Fife, Scotland, and educated at the University of Glasgow. Most of his career was spent in England. The generically named Smith was, after all, a product of free choice. And lest there be any doubt, the invisible hand extends far beyond the literary world.

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