The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson

Abstract

In The Road to Monticello, Kevin J. Hayes, a professor of English at the University of Central Oklahoma, applies his expertise in print culture and the histories of the book and of reading to Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the most assiduous bibliophile in American history. Hayes's Jefferson is a major figure in American literature as well as in the histories of American government, politics, diplomacy, and law. Hayes sees Jefferson as a nexus point on a dense web of intellectual, bibliographic, and educational connections, and he traces that web's scope and complexities with patience, skill, and sagacity. A signal achievement of The Road to Monticello is its exploration of Jefferson's education. Hayes's method parallels that of E. P. Thompson in Whigs and Hunters (1975). Like Thompson, Hayes parachutes into the center of unknown terrain and maps it, radiating outward from his landing point. Hayes uses as his four landing points the teachers who guided Jefferson's education: his tutors Rev. William Douglas and Rev. James Maury, Professor William Small of the College of William and Mary, and the eminent Virginia attorney George Wythe. By reconstructing networks of these teachers' writings and publications, fellow students, and other forms of intellectual influence, Hayes gives us a far more coherent and rigorous account of Jefferson's intellectual growth than we have ever had.

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