The Sage of Monticello (Jefferson and His Time, Vol 6) [Hardcover]

Dumas Malone (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1981

Dumas Malone's classic six-volume biography Jefferson and His Time was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history and became the standard work on Jefferson's life.

Volume 6. The Sage of Monticello

This final volume provides an all-encompassing account of Jefferson's accomplishments, friendships, and family difficulties in his last seventeen years, revealing his shift from the realm of politics to his roles as family man, architect, and educational enthusiast. Describing Jefferson's retirement from Washington, this volume recounts the events that formed Jefferson's final years, particularly the founding of the Library of Congress and the University of Virginia, in which he played a major role.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

[W]ith splendid insight and artistry, Professor Dumas Malone has reconstructed the world through which Jefferson passed, and preserved and presented to us a complex and engaging Jefferson, in a masterpiece of humanistic scholarship.

(National Endowment for the Humanities, The Chairman's Citation, presented to Dumas Malone April 30, 1979 ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Dumas Malone, 1892--1986, spent thirty-eight years researching and writing Jefferson and His Time. In 1975 he received the Pulitzer Prize in history for the first five volumes. From 1923 to 1929 he taught at the University of Virginia; he left there to join the Dictionary of American Biography, bringing that work to completion as editor-in-chief. Subsequently, he served for seven years as director of the Harvard University Press. After serving on the faculties of Yale and Columbia, Malone retired to the University of Virginia in 1959 as the Jefferson Foundation Professor of History, a position he held until his retirement in 1962. He remained at the university as biographer-in-residence and finished his Jefferson biography at the University of Virginia, where it was begun.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 551 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company; 1st edition (July 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316544639
• ISBN-13: 978-0316544634
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,214,764 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This biography is a classic and it reads like a dream., August 20, 2000

By 

Frank J O'Connor - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sage of Monticello (Jefferson and His Time, Vol 6) (Hardcover)

If you love Jefferson, biography, American history, good writing in fat books and if you have world enough and time, this monumental six volume biography is calling you. Jefferson has taken his knocks recently and deservedly so, but while this is stronly sympathetic to the sage, it is not uncritical nor a whitewash. While Jefferson has earned his detractors, he deserves his admirers too, and in Malone he has found a worthy and eloquent celebrant of his genius. John Adams was right: Jefferson still lives and nowhere as happily as in this biography.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jefferson and His Time: The Sage of Monticello, April 18, 2002

By 

Joe Zika "Khemprof" (Cincinnati, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Sage of Monticello: Volume VI (Jefferson & His Time) (Paperback)

Jefferson and His Time: The Sage of Monticello is the crowning jewel of this sixth out of six volume set. This Pulitzer Prize winning series about Thomas Jefferson took the author (Dumas Malone) a lifetime to write, as he started it in 1943 and finished it in 1981.

This volume takes us from the end of Jefferson's second term as President to his death. But these times are Jefferson's best in terms of his satisfaction with his immediate family, even though at times were a bit rocky, Jefferson longed of retirement from public life. Long ago friendship of John Adams was rekindled with frequent correspondence... James Madison not living too far away from Jefferson was a frequent correspondent.

Jefferson's talent wasn't wasted as he worked on the establishment and founding of the University of Virginia. He proved himself as one of the preeminent force for public education. But, Jefferson's personal debt played a role in Jefferson's energy and dreams.

We really get to see Jefferson as a man in this volume and his works for the public good emerge here. Also, we see Jefferson's health deminish and his battle for life play a part. This volume is masterfully engaging and well written. Impeccable scholarship and a life long dedication are very apparent.

If you like to read history and biographical history in particular and want to read about Thomas Jefferson, this series has to be on your short list.

I highly recommend reading this series. It has been an honor reading about one of America's most extraordinary men.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lots of info, slow read, April 23, 2008

By 

Chris "Bostonian at heart" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sage of Monticello: Volume VI (Jefferson & His Time) (Paperback)

When I recently finally finished the 6th and final volume of this set, I realized that I knew more about Thomas Jefferson than I do about some of my friends. There is an incredible amount of information here. Although the Sally Hemings story is barely mentioned in these books because so much information has come out since the books were written, everything else is covered in great detail.

I reviewed the first 3 books as a whole under the third volume, and I'll do the same here on the final 3. I believed that the two hardest books to read were the volumes on Jefferson's presidency. Malone covered eight years in about 1,000 pages, and he went into such detail that it was actually hard to follow at times. By the time I finished reading about the Embargo Act, there was no way I could summarize it; he had written about it so much, and it was spread out throughout the volume. The same can be said, to some extent, with the Burr conspiracy.

The final book was better, even though he exhaustingly covered the establishment of the University of Virginia, probably more than necessary. I would have preferred more on the correspondence with John Adams. And while Malone gets into Jefferson's family relationships here, he was, as a writer, a better presenter of facts than he is a story teller. Nothing about this series is "narrative."

I would recommend the books to a very serious lover of history, and I suggest the audio book as a way of speeding up what will otherwise be a very slow read. But to one with casual interest in history who admires Jefferson, I'd suggest one of the many one-volume biographies.