Margaret Bayard Smith is best known for her commentary on society in early national Washington, D.C., and for her character sketches of public figures in the capital city in the first four decades of the nineteenth century. Gaillard Hunt published an edited selection from her letters and journals in The First Forty Years of Washington Society. Portrayed by the Family Letters of Mrs. Samuel Harrison (Margaret Bayard) Smith from the Collection of Her Grandson J. Henley Smith (1906), a publication that has shaped twentieth-century perceptions of Smith. In editing her letters, Hunt omitted her discussions of her literary undertakings and of her discontent with women's status. Smith's letters portray her as a lively participant in and intelligent observer of the formative years of politics in the federal city. Her intimate vignettes of Thomas Jefferson during and after his presidency; her depiction of the burning of Washington and fear...