Jefferson and His Time

Dumas Malone

6-volume boxed set

6 x 9

129 b&w illustrations

Cloth ISBN 0-8139-2354-9 • $200.00

Paper ISBN 978-0-8139-2593-6 • $99.95

For sale in the U.S. only

Dumas Malone’s classic biography Jefferson and His Time—originally published in six volumes over a period of thirty-four years, between 1948 and 1982—was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history and became the standard work on Jefferson’s life. The University of Virginia Press is pleased to announce that the complete, illustrated six-volume biography is available for the first time in a handsome boxed set. Merrill Peterson, editor of the Library of America edition of Thomas Jefferson’s writings, has contributed a new foreword to the Virginia edition.

Volume 1. Jefferson the Virginian
This first volume explores the early phases of Jefferson’s life, from his youth, education, legal career, and marriage, to the building of Monticello, writing of the Declaration of Independence and his highly contentious governorship.

Volume 2. Jefferson and the Rights of Man
“Jefferson and the Rights of Man is better, even, than its predecessor, and that is saying a great deal. What I like particularly is that Malone . . . has by some great miracle, achieved something of Jefferson’s own combination of profundity and erudition and gracefulness.”—Henry Steele Commager

In this second volume, Malone recounts the eventful middle years of Jefferson’s life, beginning with the European mission and Jefferson’s ministry to France and continuing through his role in the French revolution and his memorable service as secretary of state in the first cabinet of George Washington.

Volume 3. Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty
“Not only has Mr. Malone mastered the vast body of Jefferson’s correspondence and the writings of his contemporaries, but he has fully explored the wealth of monographic material devoted to this epoch. . . . Throughout the book there is a sense of proportion and balance which might well be called classic.”—Harry Ammon, Virginia Magazine

Beginning with Jefferson’s final year of service as secretary of state in Washington’s cabinet, this volume takes on one of the most significant and controversial years in Jefferson’s life and indeed in modern Western history, while also exploring Jefferson’s retirement to Monticello, his decision to lead the opposition party, and his own election as president in 1801.

Volume 4. Jefferson the President; First Term, 1801–1805
“Without question, this volume, rich in detail, perceptive and sensitive in analysis, and remarkably fair with the principal partisans, will be read for generations to come.”—Chicago Tribune

Examining the first four years of Jefferson’s presidency, this volume provides a fascinating account of the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson’s continuing opposition to Hamilton’s charge for an overriding central government, and his battle with the Supreme Court.

Volume 5. Jefferson the President; Second Term, 1805–1809
“[Malone] holds Jefferson to a high level of integrity, and when he catches the Virginian in some act that does not accord with his ideal of rectitude, he suffers visible distress—perhaps more than did Jefferson himself.”—New York Times

Covering the climax of Jefferson’s forty-year career, this fifth and penultimate volume follows Jefferson through his demanding second term as president, when he famously sponsors the Lewis and Clark expedition, confronts the trial of Aaron Burr, and concludes the naval “war” with the Barbary pirates.

Volume 6. The Sage of Monticello
“[W]ith splendid insight and artistry, Professor Dumas Malone has reconstructed the world through which Jefferson passed, and preserved and presented to us a complex and engaging Jefferson, in a masterpiece of humanistic scholarship.” National Endowment for the Humanities, The Chairman’s Citation, presented to Dumas Malone April 30, 1979

This final volume provides an all-encompassing account of Jefferson’s accomplishments, friendships, and family difficulties in his last seventeen years, revealing his shift from the realm of politics to his roles as family man, architect, and educational enthusiast. Describing Jefferson’s retirement from Washington, this volume recounts the events that formed Jefferson’s final years, particularly the founding of the Library of Congress and the University of Virginia, in which he played a major role.

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Dumas Malone, 1892–1986, spent thirty-eight years researching and writing Jefferson and His Time. In 1975 he received the Pulitzer Prize in history for the first five volumes. From 1923 to 1929 he taught at the University of Virginia; he left there to join the Dictionary of American Biography, bringing that work to completion as editor-in-chief. Subsequently, he served for seven years as director of the Harvard University Press. After serving on the faculties of Yale and Columbia, Malone retired to the University of Virginia in 1959 as the Jefferson Foundation Professor of History, a position he held until his retirement in 1962. He remained at the university as biographer-in-residence and finished his Jefferson biography at the University of Virginia, where it was begun.