His Masterly Pen
A Biography of Jefferson the Writer
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- $35.99
Publisher Description
As he did for Abraham Lincoln and John Quincy Adams, award-winning biographer Fred Kaplan offers a fresh, illuminating look at the life of Thomas Jefferson and his contributions as a writer.
In this unique biography, Fred Kaplan emphasizes Thomas Jefferson’s genius with language and his ability to use the power of words to inspire and shape a nation. A man renowned for many talents, writing was one of the major activities of the statemen’s life, though much of his best, most influential writing—with the exception of the letters he wrote up to his death, numbering approximately 100,000—was done by 1789, when Jefferson was just forty-six. All of his works—from his earliest correspondence; his essays and proclamations, including A Summary View of British America, The Declaration of Independence, and Notes on the State of Virginia; his religious and scientific writings; his inaugural addresses; his addresses to Indian nations; and his exchanges with Washington, Madison, Hamilton, John and Abigail Adams, and dear friends such as Maria Cosway—demonstrate his remarkable intelligence, prescient wisdom, and literary flair and reveal the man in all his complex and controversial brilliance.
In His Masterly Pen, readers will find a new appreciation of Jefferson as a whole, of his strengths and weaknesses, and particularly of the degree to which his writing skills—which James Madison admired as “the shining traces of his pen”—are key to his personality and public career. Though Jefferson could wield his pen with unrivaled power, he was also a master of using words to both reveal and conceal from others and himself the complications, the inconsistencies, and the contradictions between his principles and his policies, between his head and his heart, and between his optimistic view of human nature and the realities of his personal situation and the world he lived in.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Biographer Kaplan (Lincoln and the Abolitionists) focuses on Thomas Jefferson's "growth and development as a writer" in this intriguing if uneven study. Among the works analyzed are the Declaration of Independence ("Jefferson's most remembered and celebrated accomplishment"); the one book he published in his lifetime, Notes on the State of Virginia (which "provides Jefferson's fullest comments on race and slavery"); and Notes of a Tour into the Southern Parts of France. Kaplan also delves into more private writings, including a series of "personally expressive and revealing" letters Jefferson wrote to Maria Cosway, a painter and musician with whom he shared a "few months of romantic attachment" in 1786. Kaplan draws out some revealing themes in Jefferson's writing, including his hypocritical use of the "slavery trope" to describe the plight of American colonists under the British crown; the tension between his support for "small independent farmers" and his membership among the elite class of landowners who accumulated most of the country's wealth; and his paternalistic tone when addressing Native American tribal leaders. But the balance between biography and literary analysis feels out of proportion, and the lack of a narrative through line sometimes makes for disjointed reading. The result is a tantalizing yet frustrating portrait.
