Jefferson, Thomas:

$475,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA; WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1781. The extremely rare privately-printed first edition of Thomas Jefferson's only book-length work published in his lifetime, issued by him in Paris in 1785, while serving as the United States Minister to France. This copy, appearing in its earliest state, was entrusted by Jefferson to his close but controversial friend and confidant, Charles Williamos, who presented it to Simon Boutin, a noteworthy collector of natural history and creator of the Folie Boutin, a spectacular garden and park in Paris. It was later owned by the renowned American bibliographer and librarian, Wilberforce Eames, and then by a descendant of Jefferson himself.Initially prepared by Jefferson only for distribution to personal friends, Notes on the State of Virginia ultimately went through several dozen editions during his lifetime and is now recognized as an enduring classic of Americana, as well as one of its greatest rarities in this first edition. Jefferson originally wrote the Notes in response to a series of queries sent to him by French diplomat François Barbé-Marbois. He first composed them in 1782, after serving as governor of Virginia in the last stages of the American Revolution. At the urging of their mutual friend, the distinguished French soldier and scientist, the Marquis de Chastellux, he later expanded his responses into a series of twenty-three essays on every aspect of his native state: geography, landforms, products, agriculture,

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