Thomas Jefferson built a formidable library. Back when having 200 books was a big deal, he eventually had over 6,700, which he donated to the Library of Congress after the Canadians (those belligerent bastards!) burned it down.

Sometime before 1783, Jefferson started creating a catalog of his library, dividing books into three major categories that accorded with Sir Francis Bacon’s divisions of the faculties of the mind: Memory (history), reason (philosophy) and imagination (fine arts). Before then, however, he had made numerous reading lists. According to Douglas Wilson, in the excellent monograph Jefferson’s Books:

In some of the numerous lists he compiled for law students, which were usually not confined to works on the law, he arranged the recommended categories of books by the time of the day at which they should be read…” (p. 34)

Before 8am, you should read “Physical Studies, Ethics, Religion, Natural Law” and save “Belles-Letres, Criticism, Rhetoric and Oratory” for after dark.

Jefferson, by the way, did not think that the organization of knowledge — or, at least of books — had to reflect a single, GodNature-given order. In 1815, he wrote to the Librarian of Congress that a “physician or theologist” would arrange the books differently. Organization should reflect utility, he believed. In fact, one of this slaves reported that Jefferson would routinely have twenty books open at a time, spread out on the floor, not to mention the five he could have open simultaneously in the spinning book holder he apparently invented.

One person’s mess is another person’s desk. In the age of the miscellaneous, we can accommodate every type of mess and order simultaneously.

According to the monograph, Jefferson’s personal favorites were Greek and Latin authors, in the original languages. We know that Locke was a big influence on the founding fathers, including Jefferson, but somewhere someone has written about the influence of the Greek playwrights and Roman poets on Jefferson’s political thinking. Any leads? I’m just curious… [Tags: taxonomy jefferson libraries everything_is_miscellaneous]

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