Jefferson, Thomas

Observations sur la Virginie.  Paris: Barrois, 1786



8vo (7 13/16 x 4 15/16 in.; 199 x 126 mm). Half-title, folding table, engraved folding map by S. J. Neele, 2 leaves of errata bound in after the map; faint dampstaining to outer corners (most pronounced in quires E–F and N–O),  occasional spotting chiefly marginal,  minor offsetting and foxing to table, some light browning to margins and to folds of map, contemporary signature on half-title effaced. Contemporary brown pastepaper boards, green stained vellum corners, calf spine, red morocco lettering piece, marbled endpapers; boards scuffed, board edges knocked, spine dry and rubbed with losses to spine ends, joints cracked.

Howes J78

8vo (7 13/16 x 4 15/16 in.; 199 x 126 mm). Half title, folding table, engraved folding map by S. J. Neele; faint dampstaining to outer corners (most pronounced in quires E–F and N–O), occasional spotting chiefly marginal, minor offsetting and foxing to table, some light browning to margins and to folds of map. Contemporary brown pastepaper boards, green stained vellum corners, calf spine, red morocco lettering piece, marbled endpapers; boards scuffed, board edges knocked, spine dry and rubbed with losses to spine ends, joints cracked.
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First edition in French and first published edition.  Jefferson's only book-length work published in his lifetime was written in response to queries from François Barbé de Marbois, then secretary to the French legation at Philadelphia. In May 1781 Jefferson wrote Marbois that he would give him "as full information as I shall be able to do on such of the subjects as are within the sphere of my acquaintance" and duly forwarded Marbois his answers in December of that year. At the urging of Chastellux, Jefferson refined and augmented his text, which was then printed in an edition of two hundred copies for private circulation (Paris, May 1785).

The private edition purloined for a pirated edition in French.  On 8 February 1786, Jefferson wrote to James Madison that he had distributed a few copies of his Notes "to confidential persons, writing in every copy a restraint against it's publication" (TJ Papers 9:265). Jefferson had given a copy to Charles Williamos who had since died. Williamos's copy reputedly ended up in the hands of an enterprising bookseller named Pierre-Théophile Barrois, who "employed a hireling translator and was about publishing it in the most injurious form possible" (TJ Papers 9:265). Tradition has it that Jefferson viewed the French edition at the time as a butchery of his work, compelling him to have Stockdale publish his Notes in London in order to prevent its re-translation from French into English. Jefferson's autobiography, written more than three decades later when Jefferson was 77, reinforces this disparagement of the French edition.  Jefferson recounted that a "European copy, by the death of the owner, got into the hands of a bookseller, who engaged its translation, & when ready for the press, communicated his intentions and manuscript to me."  He claimed the pirated version was "interverted, abridged, mutilated, and often reversing the sense of the original," adding that it contained "a blotch of errors from beginning to end" and that he was only able to correct "the most material" of errors.  Jefferson's account also relates that when a "London bookseller" saw the French edition, he asked Jefferson to permit him to publish the English original in order "to let the world see that it was not really so bad as the French translation."

Tacit endorsement of the piracy by Jefferson. In his lengthy article, "Unraveling the Strange History of Jefferson's Observations sur la Virginie (Virginia Magazine of History & Biography, 2004, Vol. 112, Issue 2), Gordon S. Barker refutes the general notion that Jefferson had discredited the French edition at the time of its publication.  True enough, Jefferson persuaded Barrois to delay publication until the translation could be honed and polished, which Jefferson undertook with his good friend the Abbé Morellet. Over a period of fifteen months in close collaboration, Morellet and Jefferson rearranged the text from a jumble of unconnected responses to Marbois' questions into a unified work.  The structure of the work began with man's natural habitat, followed by an examination of man himself, and concluded with his political and social organization. Jefferson also omitted such spurious arguments such as the claim that languages of Native Americans prove "of greater antiquity than those of Asia."  With a nod to the Enlightenment, Jefferson also omits references to God and the supernatural. Regarding slavery In the original Notes, Jefferson acknowledged that there was no bill before the Virginia Assembly to free slaves. In contrast, the wording in Observations suggests that such a bill had been proposed but not yet acted upon: "en attendant que mûrisse parmi nous le project de rendre par l'affranchisement à toute cette partie de notre population les droits de la nature humaine, on a proposé de rendre la liberté à tous les enfans des esclaves, nés postérieurement à la passation de l'acte roposé" (Observations, 1786, p. 199). It would appear, as Barker argues that as the "only senior American statesman on the Continent," Jefferson was in an advantageous position to "channel information between the two countries and to influence the exchange of ideas. He did so in French with the publication of Observations; it was a means by which developments in Revolutionary America were communicated to the Old World."