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Editorial Note from
Thomas Jefferson's Library: A Catalog with the Entries in His Own Order

edited by
James Gilreath and Douglas L. Wilson

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Editorial Note

The editors' aim has been to present the text of the catalog as it appears in
the Trist manuscript. Not only was Nicholas Trist himself a very good copyist,
knowledgeable and conscientious, but there is evidence that Jefferson proofread
the manuscript and numbered its pages. Trist was, however, quite careless about
punctuation and clearly made no effort to follow copy (that is, Jefferson's marked
copy of the 1815 printed catalog) exactly or to be consistent in regard to punc-
tuation from entry to entry. We have emulated Jefferson's example and have
made no attempt to reimpose the punctuation of his original on Trist's transcrip-
tion. In so doing, we have acted in accordance with another aim, which was to
minimize the editorial apparatus.

But the temptations that beset editors are often irresistible, and we here
confess that we have yielded to the enticements of emendation in a few instances.

(1) We have made only one correction, and that where the text exhib-
ited an obvious copying error that might cause the reader confusion. This
is duly listed at the end of this section.

(2) On a few occasions, Trist left out an entry by mistake and supplied
it at the bottom of the page with an asterisk to indicate where it should
have gone. In such cases we have simply printed the entry in its rightful
place.

(3) Where the binder has cropped part of an entry, we have supplied
the cropped material within square brackets from the 1815 catalog.

(4) We have regularized the length of the long dashes, some of which
are very long indeed in Trist's copy.

(5) Matter that was entered and then crossed out by Trist has been
omitted.


13

CORRECTION by the EDITORS:

Chapter 29: No. 61 is misnumbered 161 in the manuscript.


CORRECTION in JEFFERSON'S HAND:

  On page 109 in entry 26, Jefferson has crossed out "Inigo Jones'" (which
the editors have restored within angle brackets) and inserted "Ld. Burlington's."

  This is a strange entry. The Architecture of A. Palladio is the first complete
English edition of Palladio's work and was published in 1715 by Giacomo
Leoni. Though Inigo Jones's notes were advertised as being included in this
edition, they did not appear until the 1742 edition. Jefferson's notation, how-
ever, may refer instead to The Four Books of Andrea Palladio's Architecture pub-
lished by Isaac Ware in London in 1738, which was both dedicated to Lord
Burlington and translated by him. Richard Boyle, the third earl of Burlington,
was an important force in the early eighteenth century in the movement to instill
the principles of the Italian Renaissance in English architects. The illustrations
in the 1738 Ware edition faithfully followed the original woodblocks from the
1570 Italian edition and the publisher took pains in other ways to reflect the
integrity of the first edition. In contrast, Leoni's 1715 and 1742 versions used
copperplate engravings that, though they are based on the 1570 woodblocks,
distort the proportions of the illustrations.

  Jefferson probably would have appreciated the Burlington-Ware collabo-
ration to preserve the classical purity of their edition of Palladio's work. On the
other hand, in at least one other instance Jefferson simply confused Burlington
and Jones. In a February 28, 1804, letter to Benjamin Latrobe that is cited on
page 360 of volume 4 in Millicent Sowerby's Catalogue of the Library of Thomas
Jefferson, Jefferson wrote: "Ld. Burlington in his notes on Palladio tells us that
he found most of the buildings erected under Palladio's direction & described
in his architecture to have their columns made of brick in this way and covered
over with stucco." No such information is included in Isaac Ware's edition of
The Four Books of Andrea Palladio's Architecture, but it does appear in one of
Jones's notes in the 1742 edition of The Architecture of A. Palladio. Whether or
not Jefferson once again made the error of confusing Burlington and Jones
when correcting the Trist manuscript is not certain.
14

Foreword   |   Introduction   |   Selected Reading List   |   Editorial Note   |   Chapter: 1  |  2   |   3  |  4   |   5  |  6   |   7  |  8   |   9  |  10   |   11   |   12   |   13   |   14   |   15   |   16   |   17   |   18   |   19   |   20   |   21   |   22   |   23   |   24   |   25   |   26   |   27   |   28   |   29   |   30   |   31   |   32   |   33   |   34   |   35   |   36   |   37   |   38   |   39   |   40   |   41   |   42   |   43   |   44   |   Appendix

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