The Practical Morality of Life

This book considers how two eighteenth-century writers—the actress George Anne Bellamy and the moral philosopher Adam Smith—explore moral judgment, ambition, virtue, and the theatre in their books. Bellamy’s Apology (1785) is usually read as a scandalous or theatrical memoir, and her career has been considered in relation to issues such as attitudes toward pregnancy and motherhood. Yet her memoir is also a sophisticated book applying Bellamy’s understanding of the actor-spectator dynamic in relation to the theatre, exchange, and moral judgment, and Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments illuminates how. Bellamy’s account of the Alston Street Theatre in Grahamstown also adds to our understanding of Smith’s arguments about the theatre in The Wealth of Nations (1776), where his position seems to differ from that he took in opposing the construction of the theatre in 1762. Smith owned a copy of Bellamy’s Apology , where a number of dogeared pages suggest interest in her account of that theatre and other matters. Its publication shortly before Smith began to write his publisher about a sixth edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1790) renders it a relevant context. This book adds Bellamy’s Apology to the list of inspirations for Smith’s final revisions, particularly in relation to praiseworthiness, ambition, the character of virtue, veracity, and what Smith called “a practical system of Morality.”