Notes on the State of Virginia

Notes on the State of Virginia is the only full-length book published by the American statesman and polymath Thomas Jefferson. Written in 1781 and revised extensively thereafter, the Notes originated from a series of 23 “queries” put to Jefferson by François Barbé-Marbois, the secretary to the French legation at the Continental Congress. The questions concerned various aspects of the landscape, climate, commerce, laws, institutions, and people of Virginia, the dimensions of which were considerably more extensive in the colonial period than today. In his answers, Jefferson not only provides a compendium of information about his native state (which he refers to throughout as a “country”) but also expounds many of his political, philosophical, social, and aesthetic beliefs.

The book is thus a key document of the thought of one of the most prominent of America’s Founding Fathers and has been called “one of America’s first permanent literary and intellectual landmarks” (W.W. Norton). Based on extensive memoranda that Jefferson compiled over many years, Notes on the State of Virginia captures a crucial moment during the Revolutionary War when the life of Virginia and the American colonies as a whole was held in the balance.

This guide refers to the 1954 edition of the Notes prepared by William Peden and published by W.