The aim of the edition, as established by founding editor Julian Boyd, is to present all extant letters to and from Jefferson as accurately as possible. Highlights of his editorial method and its evolution under successive general editors appear below. For further details, see the editorial method statements in Vol. 1:xxix–xxxiv, Vol. 22:vii–xi, Vol. 24:vii–viii, and Vol. 30:xiii–xiv .
Volume 1: documents appear in chronological sequence; standardized rendering of place and dateline for all documents; all sentences begin with a capital letter regardless of how they appear in original; spelling and grammar retained as in original except contractions and abbreviations are expanded; obvious errors and slips of the pen are silently corrected; bracketed ellipses used to indicate missing, damaged or undecipherable text; foreign language documents presented without translation in their original language. Annotation consists of descriptive or source notes listing physical description of document and all known copies as well as record of Jefferson’s endorsement. Unnumbered explanatory notes offer brief explication on contents of letter when necessary with key words rendered in small capital letters. Textual notes collate different versions of the text or clarify renderings within a document. Editorial notes usually precede a file folder or grouping of documents clustered around a common topic rather than a strict chronological order.
Volume 6: references to Jefferson’s epistolary record or Summary Journal of Letters are abbreviated as SJL and appear in the descriptive notes. For letters written in code, textual notes and superscript numerals are used and may be supplemented by the use of italics. Textual notes indicate whether the decoding was done by the recipient or someone else or the editors.
Volume 21: is a comprehensive cumulative index of the first twenty volumes as there are no individual volume indexes for Vols. 1-20. Full names are provided for most individuals and some subjects are redefined or grouped in larger categories to improve accuracy and facilitate use. Main entries appear in alphabetical order but in subentries, references to letters to or from Jefferson come first.
Volume 22: beginning with this volume, each volume has its own separate index. Practice of lengthy file folders is abandoned. Anas entries, compiled by Jefferson, appear at the chronological period to which they refer.
Volume 24: slips of the pen and copyists’s errors are now treated uniformly in all documents whether written by Jefferson or not. Minor or transparent occurrences are corrected silently, but otherwise such occurrences are allowed to stand, with a note if required or corrected in the text with the original reading in a subjoined textual note.
Volume 30: a revised, more literal transcription style is adopted. Jefferson’s idiosyncratic style of lowercasing the first word in a sentence is retained and not modernized as in previous volumes and follows the usage of the writer. Punctuation is retained as written with double marks of punctuation allowed to stand. Misspellings or slips of the pen are not silently corrected but are allowed to stand or are recorded in a subjoined textual note. English translations or translation summaries are provided along with all foreign language documents.
Common abbreviations
RC recipient’s copy
PrC press copy
FC file copy (all contemporary copies retained by the author or his agents)
Lb letterbook (used with FC and Tr to denote texts copied into bound volumes)
Tr transcript (all contemporary and later copies except file copies)
Common Repository Symbols
CSmH The Huntington Library, San Marino, California
DLC Library of Congress
DNA National Archives
MHi Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston
MoSHi Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis
ViW College of William and Mary, Williamsburg
ViU University of Virginia, Charlottesville
Other symbols can be found in the Library of Congress’s latest edition of Symbols of American Libraries or online at http://www.loc.gov/marc/organizations/