After the British burned the congressional library during the War of 1812, former president Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) sold his personal library of some 6,500 books to Congress, which for years they served as the heart of the Library of Congress’s collection. Later he wrote to his correspondent and friend John Adams, “I cannot live without books, but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.”
A fire had destroyed Jefferson’s first personal collection of books in 1770. After making the sale of his second collection to Congress, he began putting together a third library, amassing about 1,600 volumes before his death in 1826.
Jefferson was a polyglot—able to read French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, and Latin—and his selection of subjects was as eclectic as his many interests, running from poetry and literature to histories, from treatises on science to political works.
Below are just a few books that influenced The Sage of Monticello.
‘History of England’
English Royal Dedication in Volume I of original French edition of de Rapin's "Histoire d'Angleterre" of 1724. Public Domain
From his father, who died when Jefferson was 14, he inherited the estate’s library, which included Paul de Rapin-Thoyras’s “History of England.” In “Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power,” biographer Jon Meacham devotes several paragraphs to a discussion of this book’s influence on Jefferson and others of his time. Rapin believed that English history was, at bottom, a struggle over rights between the monarchy and the people. From Rapin and others, Meacham writes, “Jefferson took this way of thinking about politics seriously, later arguing that all societies were likely to be divided into such camps.”
The Classics
During his formal education as a youth and then as a student at Williamsburg’s College of William and Mary, Jefferson read extensively from the classics. In an online article, “Thomas Jefferson’s Reading Lists,” we find titles and authors compiled from Jefferson’s recommendations to acquaintances and family. Here is an abundance of histories of the ancient world by men like Herodotus, Thucydides, Julius Caesar, Livy, and Plutarch.When American historians discuss how Ancient Rome served as a template for the American republic, they are pointing to Founding Fathers like Jefferson. His reading of Roman history is a primary example of these connections at play in American government and law.
‘The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman’
From George Cruikshank's illustrations to Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy." Public Domain
Published serially in the mid-1720s, Laurence Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy” has never since gone out of print. The eccentricities of this humorous and unique novel—at one point, as Sterne tells his readers, 10 pages are left blank, lest their brilliance diminish the rest of the book—remain unique in the annals of publishing.
Jefferson wrote that this novel was “the best course of morality ever written,” and he and his wife Patty often read it aloud together. As she lay dying in 1782, Patty wrote out some lines of a verse from “Shandy” to share with her husband, but was too weak to complete the passage. From memory, Jefferson finished for her:
—and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, every absence which follows it, are preludes to the eternal separation which we are shortly to make!
‘Two Treatises on Government’
A page from Locke's "Two Treatises of Government." Public Domain
Writing a century before the American Revolution, in his “Two Treatises” philosopher John Locke argued that certain rights, like life, liberty, and property, belong to all people. His ideas regarding these natural rights demolished the idea of the divine right of kings, leading to political changes both in Great Britain and in the American colonies.
Jefferson was so taken with these arguments that parts of the Declaration of Independence might have been written by Locke himself. The Declaration’s “inalienable rights” come straight out of Locke. In her 2019 article for the John Locke Foundation, Brenée Swanzy notes that the language in the “Treatises” and that used by Jefferson in the Declaration are at times almost identical.
“Imitation,” as the old saying goes, “is the sincerest form of flattery.”
‘The Architecture of A. Palladio’
The front page of "The Four Books of Architecture" by Andrea Palladio (1642 edition). Public Domain)
Jefferson also imitated another master, in this case the 16th-century Italian architect Andrea Palladio. Having become interested in architecture in his student days at the College of William and Mary, Jefferson put together one of the largest collections of architecture books in the American colonies. The works of Palladio, which Jefferson called his “architectural bible,” were the center of this collection. The Italian’s resurrection of designs from Ancient Greece and Rome—the graceful lines, the combination of buildings and gardens, and the use of the column—were adopted by Jefferson.
Monticello, the home he designed near Charlottesville, is the work Jefferson is best remembered for, yet his architectural influence was felt far beyond that project. He helped design several homes for friends, had a hand in the layout and construction of buildings in the nation’s new capital, and created the “Academical Village” for housing students at the new University of Virginia.
Fuse Jeffersonian genius with books, and you have one of the men who helped create a new nation, a republic, as Lincoln said, “conceived in Liberty.”
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