The Sage of Monticello - (Jefferson and His Time) by Dumas Malone (Paperback)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

Dumas Malone's classic six-volume biography Jefferson and His Time was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history and became the standard work on Jefferson's life.

Volume 6. The Sage of Monticello

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.

From the Back Cover

'The Sage of Monticello' brilliantly recounts the accomplishments, friendships, and family difficulties of Jefferson's last seventeen years--including his retirement from Washington and the presidency, his correspondence with John Adams and James Madison, his mounting personal tribulations, and his role in the founding of the Library of Congress and the University of Virginia, where he proved himself to be an extraordinary educator and architect as well as a statesman. This is a fitting final chapter in the life of one of America's greatest men.

Review Quotes

[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"

About the Author

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.