Selected Bibliography:
Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826)
Last revised 14 September 1999
Bibliography
- Frank Shuffelton, Thomas Jefferson: A Complete, Annotated
Bibliography of Writings about Him, 1826-1980 (New York:
Garland, 1983).
- Frank Shuffelton, Thomas Jefferson, 1981-1990: An
Annotated Bibliography (New York: Garland, 1992). This and
the previous volume are on the Web at http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/bibliog/
- See also O'Neal, below, under "Architecture and the Arts."
Editions
Collected Works
- The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul Leicester
Ford, 10 vols. (New York: Putnam's, 1892-1899).
- The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Andrew A.
Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, 20 vols. (Washington, D.C.:
Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1903). The fullest
collection of writings to date, but not so carefully edited as
the earlier Ford edition.
- The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd et.
al. (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1950-). 27 volumes to
date, the most recent containing papers from September 1793
through December 1793. Will be the definitive edition when
complete. Includes letters to Jefferson as well as his own
papers, and contains important scholarly notes, especially in the
early volumes edited by Boyd.
- Thomas Jefferson:Writings, ed. Merrill D. Peterson
(New York: Library of America, 1984). The best single-volume
collection.
Other Published Writings
- Dickinson W. Adams, ed., Jefferson's Extracts from the
Gospels (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1983). All three
of Jefferson's versions of the Gospels, with relevant
correspondence about his religious opinions. Valuable
introduction by Eugene Sheridan.
- James A. Bear, Jr., ed., Jefferson's Memorandum Books,
2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1997). Jefferson's
account books with records of daily expenses.
- Edwin Morris Betts and James A. Bear, Jr., The Family
Letters of Thomas Jefferson (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of
Virginia, 1986). Correspondence of Jefferson with his children
and grandchildren.
- Gilbert Chinard, ed., The Commonplace Book of Thomas
Jefferson: A Repertory of His Ideas on Government (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1926). Jefferson's legal commonplace
book.
- Lester Cappon, The Adams-Jefferson Letters (Chapel
Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1959). All the
correspondence between Jefferson and John and Abigail Adams.
- Wilbur Samuel Howell, ed., Jefferson's Parliamentary
Writings (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1988).
Jefferson's Manual of Parliamentary Practice, written when
he was vice-president, with other relevant papers.
- Frank Shuffelton, ed., Notes on the State of Virginia
(New York: Penguin, 1999). Edition of Jefferson's only published
book, follows the 1787 Stockdale edition that was the basis for
almost all nineteenth-century reprints. Places in the footnotes
Jefferson's later revisions done in his personal copy.
- James Morton Smith, ed., The Republic of Letters: The
Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison,
1776-1826, 3 vols. (New York: Norton, 1995).
- Douglas L. Wilson, ed., Jefferson's Literary Commonplace
Book (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1989).
Biographies
- Fawn M. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History
(New York: Norton, 1974). Notable for its resurrection of the
stories about Sally Hemings and sharply criticized at the time of
its publication. Recent DNA evidence seems to support Brodie
twenty-five years after the fact.
- Andrew Burstein, The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a
Grieving Optimist (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia,
1995). Portrays Jefferson in terms of the sentimental, moral
sense theory of his time and offers an excellent account of his
emotional life.
- Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time, 6 vols. (Boston:
Little Brown, 1948-81). Still the definitive biography, but needs
to be supplemented with more recent scholarship.
- Jack McLaughlin, Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography
of a Builder (New York: Henry Holt, 1988). Focuses on
Jefferson's life at Monticello and his relationship to his house.
- Peter S. Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993). Important
collection of essays presenting new scholarship on a range of
Jeffersonian concerns and issues.
- Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New
Nation (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970). The best
single-volume general biography.
- Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson: A Reference
Biography (New York: Scribners, 1986). Individual essays
covering various aspects of Jefferson's life and interests.
Criticism
Architecture and the Arts
- James S. Ackerman, "Thomas Jefferson," in The Villa: Form
and Ideology of Country Houses (Princeton: Princeton Univ.
Press, 1990), 185-211.
- William Howard Adams, ed., The Eye of Thomas Jefferson
(Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1976). Catalogue of an
exhibit that provides a veritable iconography of Jefferson's era.
- William Howard Adams, ed., Jefferson and the Arts: An
Extended View (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1976).
Useful collection of essays.
- Eleanor Berman, Thomas Jefferson among the Arts: An Essay
in Early Aesthetics (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947).
- C. Allan Brown, "Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest: The
Mathematics of an Ideal Villa," Journal of Garden History
10 (April/June 1990): 117-39.
- S. Allen Chambers, Jr., Poplar Forest and Thomas
Jefferson (Forest, VA: Corporation for Jefferson's Poplar
Forest, 1993). On Jefferson's other house, an octagonal design.
- Walter L. Creese, "Jefferson's Charlottesville," in The
Crowning of the American Landscape: Eight Great Spaces and Their
Buildings (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1985).
- Helen Cripe, Thomas Jefferson and Music
(Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1974).
- Fiske Kimball, The Capitol of Virginia: A Landmark of
American Architecture, ed. Jon Kukla (Richmond: Virginia
State Library and Archive, 1989). A classic updated.
- William B. O'Neal, An Intelligent Interest in
Architecture: A Bibliography of Publications about Thomas
Jefferson as an Architect (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of
Virginia, 1969).
- Susan Stein, The World of Thomas Jefferson at
Monticello (New York: Abrams, 1993). On the furnishings and
interiors of Monticello.
- Richard Guy Wilson, ed., Thomas Jefferson's Academical
Village: The Creation of an Architectural Masterpiece
(Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1994).
Declaration of Independence
- Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in
the History of Political Ideas (New York: Harcourt Brace,
1922). Classic exposition of the Declaration as a Lockean
document.
- Joseph J. Ellis, ed., What Did the Declaration
Declare? (New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999). Useful
casebook presenting various perspectives.
- Jay Fliegelman, Declaring Independence: Jefferson, Natural
Language, and the Culture of Performance (Stanford: Stanford
Univ. Press, 1993). The Declaration in the context of a broad
cultural shift to a modern rhetoric.
- Allen Jayne, Jefferson's Declaration of Independence:
Origins, Philosophy, Theology (Lexington: Univ. Press of
Kentucky, 1998).
- Pauline Meier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration
of Independence (New York: Knopf, 1997). The Declaration as
an expression of the American mind.
- Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of
Independence (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978). Argues for
the Declaration as shaped by Scottish moral sense theory.
Foreign Policy
- Doron S. Ben-Atar, The Origins of Jeffersonian Commercial
Policy and Diplomacy (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993).
- Lawrence S. Kaplan, Entangling Alliances with None:
American Foreign Policy in the Age of Jefferson (Kent: Kent
State Univ. Press, 1987).
- Lawrence S. Kaplan, Jefferson and France: An Essay on
Politics and Political Ideas (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press,
1967).
- Lawrence S. Kaplan, Thomas Jefferson: Westward the Course
of Empire (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1999).
- Burton Spivak, Jefferson's English Crisis: Commerce,
Embargo, and the Republican Revolution (Charlottesville:
Univ. Press of Virginia, 1979).
- Reginald C. Stuart, The Half-Way Pacifist: Thomas
Jefferson's View of War (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press,
1978).
- Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, Empire of
Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1990).
Indians and the West
- Stephen Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis,
Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1995).
- Dan L. Flores, Jefferson and Southwestern Exploration: The
Freeman & Custis Accounts of the Red River Expedition of
1806 (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1984).
- Donald A. Grinde, Jr., "Thomas Jefferson's Dualistic
Perception of Native Americans," in Thomas Jefferson and the
Education of a Citizen, ed. James Gilreath (Washington D.C.:
Library of Congress, 1999), 193-208.
- Donald Jackson, Thomas Jefferson & the Stony
Mountains: Exploring the West from Monticello (Urbana: Univ.
of Illinois Press, 1981).
- Roger G. Kennedy, "Jefferson and the Indians," Winterthur
Portfolio 27 (1992): 105-22.
- James P. Ronda, "'A Knowledge of Distant Parts': The Shaping
of the Lewis and Clark Expedition," Montana 41, no. 4
(1991): 4-19.
- James P. Ronda, ed., Thomas Jefferson and the Changing
West: From Conquest to Conservation (Albuquerque: Univ. of
New Mexico Press, 1997).
- Bernard W. Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction: Jeffersonian
Philanthropy and the American Indian (Chapel Hill: Univ. of
North Carolina Press, 1973).
Law
- Holly Brewer, "Entailing Aristocracy in Colonial Virginia:
'Ancient Feudal Restraints' and Revolutionary Reform," William
and Mary Quarterly 54 (1997): 307-46.
- Frank L. Dewey, Thomas Jefferson, Lawyer
(Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1986). Good account of
Jefferson's practice of the law.
- Edward Dumbauld, Thomas Jefferson and the Law (Norman:
Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1978). Comprehensive account of
Jefferson's thought and practice.
- Robert A. Ferguson, "Mysterious Obligation: Jefferson's
Notes on the State of Virginia," in Law and Letters in
American Culture (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1984),
34-58. Reads Notes in terms of Jefferson's knowledge of
law and legal philosophy.
- Bernard Schwartz, with Barbara Wilcie Kern and R. B.
Bernstein, Thomas Jefferson and Bolling v. Bolling: Law and
the Legal Profession in Pre-Revolutionary America (San
Marino: Huntington Library, 1997).
Literature and Literary Interpretations
- Mitchell Robert Breitweiser, "Jefferson's Prospect,"
Prospects 10 (1985): 315-52.
- Andrew Burstein, "Jefferson and the Familiar Letter,"
Journal of the Early Republic 14 (1994): 195-220.
- Andrew Burstein and Catherine Mowbray, "Jefferson and
Sterne," Early American Literature 29 (1994): 19-34.
- Stanley R. Hauer, "Thomas Jefferson and the Anglo-Saxon
Language," PMLA 98 (1983): 879-98.
- William L. Hedges, "Telling Off the King: Jefferson's
Summary View as an American Fantasy," Early American
Literature 22 (1987): 166-74.
- Robert Lawson-Peebles, "Thomas Jefferson and the Spacious
Field of Imagination," in Landscape and Written Expression in
Revolutionary America: The World Turned Upside Down
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988), 165-95.
- Susan Manning, "Naming of Parts, or, The Comforts of
Classification: Thomas Jefferson's Construction of America as
Fact and Myth," Journal of American Studies 30 (1996):
345-64.
- Lee Quinby, "Thomas Jefferson: The Virtue of Aesthetics and
the Aesthetics of Virtue," American Historical Review 87
(1982): 337-56.
- Elizabeth Renker, "'Declaration-men' and the Rhetoric of
Self-Presentation," Early American Literature 24 (1989):
120-34.
Politics and Political Thought
- Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., The Jeffersonian Republicans:
The Formation of Party Organization, 1789-1801 (Chapel Hill:
Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1957).
- David N. Mayer, The Constitutional Thought of Thomas
Jefferson (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1994).
- Charles A. Miller, Jefferson and Nature: An
Interpretation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1988).
- Merrill D. Peterson and Robert C. Vaughan, eds., The
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom: Its Evolution and
Consequences in American History (New York: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1988). Important collection of essays on what Jefferson
saw asone of his three most important achievements.
- Garrett Ward Sheldon, The Political Philosophy of Thomas
Jefferson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1991).
Presidency
- Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., The Process of Government under
Jefferson (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1978).
- Robert M. Johnstone, Jr., Jefferson and the Presidency:
Leadership in the Young Republic (Ithaca: Cornell Univ.
Press, 1978).
- Forrest McDonald, The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson
(Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 1976).
Race and Slavery
- David Brion Davis, Was Thomas Jefferson the Authentic
Enemy of Slavery? (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).
- Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty
in the Age of Jefferson (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996).
- Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings:
An American Controversy (Charlottesville: University Press of
Virginia, 1997).
- Charles L. Griswold, "Rights and Wrongs: Jefferson, Slavery,
and Philosophical Quandaries," in A Culture of Rights: The
Bill of Rights in Philosophy, Politics, and Law -- 1791 and
1991, ed. Michael J. Lacey and Knud Haakonsen (New York:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991), 144-214.
- Robert McColley, Slavery and Jeffersonian Virginia
(Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1964).
- John C. Miller, The Wolf By the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and
Slavery (New York: Free Press, 1977).
- Frank Shuffelton, "Race, Culture, and the Failure of
Anthropological Method," in A Mixed Race: Ethnicity in Early
America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 257-77.
- Jean Yarborough, "Race and the Moral Foundation of the
American Republic: Another Look at the Declaration and the
Notes on Virginia," Journal of Politics 53 (1991):
90-106.
- Michael Zuckerman, "The Power of Blackness: Thomas Jefferson
and the Revolution in St. Domingue," in Almost Chosen People:
Oblique Biographies in the American Grain (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993).
Religion and Philosophy
- Susan Bryan, "Reauthorizing the Text: Jefferson's Scissors
Edit of the Gospels," Early American Literature 22 (1987):
19-42.
- Adrienne Koch, The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson (New
York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1943).
- Edwin S. Gaustad, Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious
Biography of Thomas Jefferson (Grand Rapids: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing, 1996).
- Charles B. Sanford, The Religious Life of Thomas
Jefferson (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1984).
- Morton White, The Philosophy of the American
Revolution (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978).
Science
- Silvio Bedini, Thomas Jefferson: Statesman of Science
(New York: Macmillan, 1990).
- Daniel J. Boorstin, The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson
(New York: Holt, 1948).
- I. Bernard Cohen, "Science and the Political Thought of
Thomas Jefferson: The Declaration of Independence," in Science
and the Founding Fathers: Science in the Political Thought of
Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and Madison (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1995), 61-134.
- John C. Greene, American Science in the Age of
Jefferson (Ames: Iowa State Univ. Press, 1984).
Electronic Resources
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