Jefferson Trove
Posted by: Rebecca Vnuk
Thomas Jefferson took a keen interest in the Library of Congress while he was President. He was also an avid book collector, and when the Library of Congress was destroyed during the British invasion of Washington in 1814, more than 6,000 books from his personal library formed the nucleus of the new LC. That wasn’t the end of his collecting, however.
The New York Times is reporting today that a trove of Jefferson’s books has recently been discovered at the Washington University library in St. Louis. These 28 titles in 74 volumes were part of his “retirement library” of 1,600 books that were auctioned off by his heirs to pay his debts.
The discovery was made by the manager of the Thomas Jefferson’s Libraries project, a database of information about Jefferson and his books.
