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Home · Psychology and Religion · Society · [Jefferson's Reading
Lists]
1. Ancient History
2. Philosophy
3. Literature
4. American History
5. Quotes
6. Notes
7. Resources
Ancient History
Herodotus – c. 450 BC, 'Father of History'
The Histories - wealth of information about the ancient
world
Thucydides – c. 395 BC
Polybius – c. 150 BC
Julius Caesar – c. 50 BC
Sallust (historian) – c. 50 BC
History of Rome
Suetonius – c. 100 AD
Herodian – c. 210 AD
Philosophy
Plato – Athens, c. 400 BC
The Republic*
Apology, Phaedo, Crito
Symposium, Phaedrus, Meno, Charmides
Sophist, Statesman, Theaetetus, Gorgias
Protagoras, Philebus, Parmenides, Euthyphro
Timaeus
Laws
First Alcibiades, Second Alcibiades, Laches, Cratylus,
Critias
Lysis, Euthydemus, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Ion,
Menexenus
* Jefferson sought in this work practical political suggestions for
the new American government and felt disappointed. Had he
understood that its true subject is not politics but morals and
psychology, i.e., an allegory for the right governance of the human
soul, his opinion might have been better.
Cicero – Roman, c. 45 BC
Morals
Moral Epistles
Essays
Pythagoras
Meditations
Lucretius – c. 60 BC, Roman Epicurean philosopher
David Hume
Voltaire
Candide
Letters on the English
Conyers Middleton
Philosophical Works
James Beattie
Literature
Homer
The Iliad
The Odyssey
Virgil
The Aeneid
John Milton
Paradise Lost
Areopagitica – on freedom of the press
Sophocles
Aeschylus
Euripides
William Shakespeare
Plays
Sonnets
Other Poems
Plays
Poems
Edward Young – English
Night Thoughts
Poems
Poems
Joseph Addison
Cato
The Spectator
The Misanthrope
Tartuffe the Hypocrite
Gulliver's Travels
A Modest Proposal
A Tale of a Tub
The Drapier's Letters
Alexander Pope
American History
William Robertson
William Smith
Samuel Smith
Benjamin Franklin
William Stith
History of Virginia
Robert Beverly
Quotes
"Jefferson scarcely passed a day without reading a portion of the
classics." —Rayner's Life of Jefferson p. 22.
"To read the Latin and Greek authors in their original, is a sublime
luxury; and I deem luxury in science to be at least as justifiable as
in architecture, painting, gardening, or the other arts.
~ To Joseph Priestley (A sublime luxury, Philadelphia, 27
January 1800)
"I think the Greeks and Romans have left us the present [purest?]
models which exist of fine composition, whether we examine
them as works of reason, or of style and fancy; and to them we
probably owe these characteristics of modern composition. I know
of no composition of any other ancient people, which merits the
least regard as a model for its matter or style."
~ To Joseph Priestley (A sublime luxury, Philadelphia, 27
January 1800)
"The utilities we derive from the remains of the Greek and Latin
languages are, first as models of pure taste in writing. To these we
are certainly indebted for the natural and chaste style of modern
composition, which so much distinguishes the nations to whom
these languages are familiar. Without these models we should
probably have continued the inflated style of our northern
ancestors, or the hyperbolical and vague one of the East."
~ To John Brazer (The value of classical learning, Poplar
Forest, 24 August 1819)
"To whom are they [the classical languages] useful? Certainly not
to all men. There are conditions of life to which they must be
forever estranged. ... to the moralist they are valuable, because
they furnish ethical writings highly and justly esteemed; although
in my own opinion the moderns are far advanced beyond them in
this line of science; the divine finds in the Greek language a
translation of his primary code, of more importance to him than
the original because better understood; and, in the same language,
the newer code, with the doctrines of the earliest fathers.... The
lawyer finds in the Latin language the system of civil law most
conformable with the principles of justice of any which has ever
yet been established among men, and from which much has been
incorporated into our own. The physician as good a code of his art
as has been given us to this day.... The statesman will find in these
languages history, politics, mathematics, ethics, eloquence, love of
country, to which he must add the sciences of his own day, for
which of them should be unknown to him? And all the sciences
must recur to the classical languages for the etymon, and sound
understanding of their fundamental terms.... To sum the whole, it
may truly be said that the classical languages are a solid basis for
most, and an ornament to all the sciences.
~ To John Brazer (The value of classical learning, Poplar
Forest, 24 August 1819)
"The learning of Greek and Latin, I am told, is going into disuse in
Europe. I know not what their manners and occupations may call
for; but it would be very ill-judged in us to follow their example in
this instance.
~ Notes on the State of Virginia. London: Stockdale, 1787;
Query 14 ('Laws')
"I read one or two newspapers a week, but with reluctance give
even that time from Tacitus and Horace, and so much other more
agreeable reading."
~ To David Howell (Monticello, 15 December 1810)
"Our newspapers for the most part, present only the caricatures of
disaffected minds."
~ To Marc Auguste Pictet (Washington, 5 February 1803)
"Note. Under each of the preceding heads, the books are to be read
in the order in which they are named. These by no means
constitute the whole of what might be usefully read in each of
these branches of science. The mass of excellent works going
more into detail is great indeed. But those here noted will enable
the student to select for himself such others of detail as may suit
his particular views and dispositions. They will give him a
respectable, an useful & satisfactory degree of knowlege in these
branches, and will themselves form a valuable and sufficient
library for a lawyer, who is at the same time a lover of science."
~ To Bernard Moore (ca. 1773?; included in Jefferson to John
Minor, Monticello 30 August 1814)
Notes
Resources
Books (Jefferson)
Foley, John P. (ed.) The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia: A
Comprehensive Collection of the Views of Thomas
Jefferson. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1900. [ more ]
Ford, Paul Leicester. The Works of Thomas Jefferson.
Federal Edition. In 12 vols. New York: G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1904-5. Monticello Aug. 30. 1814
Hayes, Kevin J. The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind
of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Oxford University
Press US, 2008
Gilreath, James; Wilson, Douglas L. (eds.). Thomas
Jefferson's Library: A Catalog with the Entries in His
Own Order. Washington DC: Library of Congress, 1989.
Peterson, Merrill D. (ed.) Thomas Jefferson Writings.
Literary Classics of the United States. New York, 1984.
(Letters, pp. 733 to 1517). Letters online .
Richard, Carl J. The Founders and the Classics: Greece,
Rome, and the American Enlightenment. Cambridge
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995 .
Richard, Carl J. The Golden Age of the Classics in America:
Greece, Rome, and the Antebellum United States.
Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009.
Articles (Jefferson)
Cothran, Martin. The Classical Education of the Founding
Fathers. Classical Teacher, Spring 2007.