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Abstract Few authors in Jefferson’s retirement library were better represented than Baron d’Holbach, the renowned freethinker who had dared to question the basic tenets of Christianity. Holbach had established his reputation with Christianisme Dévoilé, a scathing attack tracing human evil back to religion in general and Christianity in particular. He developed his ideas along these same lines in subsequent treatises. Systéme de la Nature, his most famous work, denied the existence of a deity. Long, ponderous, and often confusing, Systéme de la Nature nonetheless provoked contemporary readers to rethink their understanding of Christianity. To give his ideas greater currency, Holbach digested the work as Bon Sens. These two works were part of the great library Jefferson sold to Congress, and he bought replacement copies of both for his retirement library. Neither of these anonymously published works verifies Jefferson’s interest in Holbach, however: he attributed both to Diderot. The catalogue of his retirement library shows that Jefferson really became interested in Holbach during the last ten years of his life. Altogether, he had nine works by Holbach in his retirement library.
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