Descripción
8vo., 392 pages, fine engraved portrait frontispiece of Thomas Jefferson by John Scholes (and pictured in Cunningham's 'The Image of Thomas Jefferson in the Public Eye'), full-page "eye draught" of Madsion's Cave and folding chart listing Indian tribes, as well as Jefferson's draft of the Virginia Constitution, "Act of Religious Freedom," and Appendix to the Murder of Logan's Family, which only appears in editions beginning in 1800, bound in handsome contemporary full speckled calf with contrasting red morocco title label to spine. A generally excellent complete copy with the Appendix, internally clean in a handsome contemporary binding which is regarded as one of America's first permanent literary and intellectual landmarks. Ex Libris Jean-Guillaume, Baron Hyde de Neuville (24 January 1776 - 28 May 1857) the renowned French aristocrat, diplomat, and politician, with his engraved bookplate to upper pastedown. NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA is the only book-length work by Thomas Jefferson to be published in his lifetime. It has been called "one of America's first permanent literary and intellectual landmarks." It was largely written in 1781 and first published in Paris, in French, in 1785. The work is both a compilation of data by Jefferson about the state's natural resources and economy, and his vigorous and often eloquent argument about the nature of the good society, which he believed was incarnated by Virginia. He expressed his beliefs in the separation of church and state, constitutional government, checks and balances, and individual liberty. He wrote extensively about slavery, the problems of miscegenation, and his belief that whites and blacks could not live together in a free society. A very scarce imprint, this printed version is identical to the 1801 New York/London editions. It is interesting to note that Jefferson's first term (1801-1805), Vice President, Aaron Burr, was from Newark which might account for an edition of this work being published there at that time."During the American Revolution, when Jefferson said 'my country' he meant Virginia" (Malone I:xiii). "Notes on the State of Virginia laid the foundations of Jefferson's high contemporary reputation as a universal scholar and of his present fame as a pioneer American scientist… this extraordinarily informing and generally interesting book may still be consulted with profit about the geography and productions, the social and political life, of 18th-century Virginia. With ardent patriotism as well as zeal for truth Jefferson combated the theories of Buffon and Raynal in regard to the degeneracy of animal and intellectual life in America, and he manifested great optimism in regard to the future of the country, but he included strictures on slavery and the government of Virginia" (ANB). "Modeled on Enlightenment philosophy, Notes… was regarded at the time as a celebration of America's attributes as much as Virginia's and as a defense of republicanism… the Virginia of his imagination was indisputably his idealized America" (Burstein and Isenberg, 120-21).
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