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JEFFERSON'S WRITINGS
> I stumbled onto your homepage and am quite impressed by your anthology of
> Jeffersonian ideas. However, I was hoping you could help me by recommending
> a book by Jefferson, or one of your own personal essays.
Thank you for stopping by and for your kind words. Jefferson wrote only
one full-length book which was published in his lifetime, and that was
his "Notes on Virginia." But I am sure that is not what you are looking
for. As for my own essays, just about everything I have written is on
the Jeffersonian Perspective website, which I assume you have already
seen. (Because I have 12 websites with seven of them related to Thomas
Jefferson, I'm never quite sure which ones correspondents have seen. ;-)
The Jeffersonian Perspective
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7970/index.htm
The best easily available source for a selection of the writings of Thomas
Jefferson in their original form is:
Thomas Jefferson
Writings. Compiled by Merrill D. Peterson
New York: The Library of America, 1984.
It should be available in any good library. To purchase the Writings of
Thomas Jefferson at a 30% discount, click on the following:
Jefferson's Writings from Amazon.com
This link is offered in association with Amazon.com
The article, "Completing the American Revolution: A Spiritual Challenge
to Islam," was received in the mail today, and I have looked it over
carefully.
The article contains the following statement:
"Fortunately, twenty volumes of Jefferson's personal writings which,
until recently, had to remain private by the terms of his last will and
testament, are now in the process of being published, one volume
every year for twenty years."
I am not familiar with such a publication, and to be frank, the statement
sounds like an off-the-cuff remark that confuses several items of
imperfectly recalled fact. There is a publication project in process, "The
Papers of Thomas Jefferson," which will be the most authoritative edition
of Jefferson's writings in existence, when it is completed. It was begun
in 1950, and is projected to include about sixty volumes, only twenty-
eight of which have been issued to date. There is already in existence a
twenty-volume edition of the writings of Thomas Jefferson, Lipscomb
and Bergh, eds., but that was published in 1904. Jefferson died in 1826,
and it would be highly unusual for the terms of a will to prevent the
publication of the testator's papers for over 150 years. Jefferson did
have a will in which he appointed his grandson, Thomas Jefferson
Randolph, as executor during his life, but there is no particular
disposition stated for his papers.
It is possible, of course, that I could be wrong, and that there is some
special publication project of Jefferson's writings that I know nothing
about, but I doubt it. I would suggest that you ask the author of the
article, Dr. Robert Dickson Crane, for specifics on this publication
project, i.e., the editor, the publisher, which volumes have been
published to date. It sounds entirely apocryphal to me.
Eyler Coates
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