Intellectual Life in Jefferson’s Virginia, 1790-1830

This book is in large part an assemblage of evidence. It includes minutiae and details, many of them of little intrinsic separate value, which add up to what it is hoped is at least the broad outline of an image. The majority of the belletristic writers here discussed, for example, have left no great impression in the history of American literature. But they do offer through their work clues to an understanding of Virginia interests and tastes in a significant period, and a few of them deserve more attention generally than they have received. In some instances mere listing of ti tles, dates, and Virginia places of publication is indicative. Admittedly the material of Chapter X, Politics and Economics, is in intellectual and general history the most appreciated and in many respects the most important. It has received relatively little space according to its importance, for it is the most familiar already, thanks to scores of published studies . Therefore the chapter, its political part especially, is more a summary and a recapitulation, really a reminder to the reader who has read the preceding nine chapters, than the fresh survey from largely primary or obscure secondary materials which the others attempt to be.