Notes on the State of Virginia "Query XIX: The present state of manufactures, commerce, interior and exterior trade?" Excerpt from Notes on the State of Virginia First written in 1780 as a set of responses to questions from French...

Notes on the State of Virginia was a book written by Thomas Jefferson. Originally written in 1781, it was subsequently updated and enlarged in 1782-83, and anonymously published in Paris in 1784. It was Jefferson's only original full-length book. It was...

In May 1784, Thomas Jefferson arrived in Philadelphia from Annapolis, where he had spent a miserable winter, much of the time in ill health, attending the fitful and dispiriting sessions of the American Congress. He carried with him the manuscript of a work that...

In his 1821 autobiographical retrospective, Thomas Jefferson recounts the history of his only published book, Notes on the State of Virginia. Jefferson recalls that, in 1780, he had welcomed the Abbe de Marbois' questionnaire about his home state as a way to organize...