Thomas Jefferson housed one of the most incredible personal libraries in the early Republic, and often wrote about the important role education must play in building a free and democratic society. His personal library at Monticello would go on to be the seed that bloomed into the new Library of Congress.
The Jefferson Research Library is part of Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, and is where the Fiske and Marie Kimball Librarian, Endrina Tay, spends her days. During this program, which coincides with what would have been the Founding Father’s 280th Birthday, Ms. Tay will discuss Jefferson’s passion for literature, as well as her ongoing research into his collections.
Join us on April 13, 2023, at 6PM, for this can’t-miss program.
This event is free and open to the public with RSVP. To register, call 843-723-9912 or fill out the form below.
About Endrina Tay:
Endrina Tay is the Fiske and Marie Kimball Librarian at the Jefferson Library at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Since 2004, her research has focused on Thomas Jefferson’s libraries and on reconstructing and understanding Jefferson’s reading universe. In 2008, she discovered (with Jeremy Dibbell) a previously unidentified Jefferson booklist that documented for the first time the library George Wythe bequeathed to Jefferson in 1806 while Jefferson was president of the United States. In 2011, together with Ann Lucas Birle, she located over 80 previously unknown extant volumes from Thomas Jefferson’s library at Washington University in St. Louis.
Her publications include “Enlightened Networks: Thomas Jefferson’s System For Working From Home,” in The Spirit of Inquiry in the Age of Jefferson (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society Press, 2022); and “Forming the Body of a Library Upon the “Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind:” Books for the University of Virginia,” in The Founding of Thomas Jefferson’s University, ed. John Ragosta, Andrew O’Shaughnessy and Peter Onuf (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019).
