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V17 2014 INDEX       E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 17, Number 27, June 29, 2014, Article 10

JEFFERSON'S NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA

Anne E. Bentley, Curator of Art & Artifacts at the Massachusetts Historical Society sent this note inspired by Dan Hamelberg's copy of the first English version of Jefferson's Notes on Virginia. Thanks. -Editor

Notes on the Statoe of Virginia For all you bibliophiles out there, the Massachusetts Historical Society has the actual manuscript Jefferson prepared for Notes on the State of Virginia which was my final conservation project before I transitioned to curatorial work here (eons ago, it seems now!)

If you’re curious about how he thought and wrote…he literally cut and pasted his corrections and additions, which made for an absolutely illegible document on microfilm. With the magic of computer code and a bevy of incredibly talented code writers here on staff, we are able to let readers play with the manuscript and see what lies beneath the corrections/additions, just as I did when I first soaked them apart. Enjoy!

Anne Bentley with Jefferson's Notes on Virginia The Massachusetts Historical Society owns a remarkable document in Thomas Jefferson's own handwriting, the text of his only full-length book, Notes on the State of Virginia. When Jefferson was in Paris in 1785 representing the United States as a diplomat, he paid to have 200 copies of Notes printed for private distribution. Prior to publication, Jefferson reworked an earlier version of his manuscript by using sealing wax to attach corrections and changes written on small additional pieces of paper to full handwritten pages. He also expanded the text by inserting additional full pages. These changes show the evolution of Jefferson's ideas on a number of topics, and the supplemental information he gathered as he wrote. This website allows the reader to interact directly with Jefferson's complex manuscript by reading the original manuscript and by following all the changes that he made to the text before it was first published—including the opportunity to see passages written by Jefferson that have been hidden by attachments for more than two centuries.

For more information and a video starring Anne Bentley, see: Notes on the State of Virginia (www.masshist.org/thomasjeffersonpapers/notes/)

To read the earlier E_Sylum article, see: RARE U.S. MINT-RELATED DOCUMENTS COMING TO NBS (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n26a02.html)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org.

To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com

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