Life of Thomas Jefferson
A Note on the Editing of This Book
he text for this edition of Rayner's Life of Thomas Jefferson was revised to make it more accessible for a general audience. Although the basic information furnished by Rayner is all here, much of it is not in Rayner's exact words, and the scholar looking for a "pristine" copy should refer to the original publication, which is available in most large public and university libraries. Below is a description of the revisions that were made to this text:
This edition does not include the "Introductory Remarks" which are listed as being "by a friend of the editor." These remarks contain a large number of ideas that are interpretative, and that are somewhat foreign to Jefferson's ideas. While this may be interesting to someone researching the various opinions existing during the early American republic, the editor felt these opinions were not germane to the purposes of a Jefferson biography today, and elected to omit this section.
This edition contains many changes in the punctuation, spelling, and occasionally in the vocabulary, in order to make the text more readable for the modern reader. Rayner used many words in a sense that is no longer familiar to the general reader. These were changed to more familiar words in order to prevent confusion, especially to younger readers.
Rayner included very few references to sources for Jefferson quotations in his book, and those quotations were taken from an unreliable edition of Jefferson's writings. The editor has attempted to supply these references to more reliable editions of Jefferson's writings, and to use those later, more authoritative editions for the text of the quotation.
Rayner did include very few notes to the text, and the editor has included several more, and may include even more in the future. These are all presented as a separate link from the main text. Rayner's own notes are idenitified as "Author's note."
The original text of this book was divided into fourteen chapters, with no chapter titles. The editor has divided the text into 39 chapters with titles in order to make the book easier to read online, and also so that the chapter titles might serve as an outline of Jefferson's life, thus making the text more usable when referring to it for a particular topic or time period. The following table lists the chapters in this edition and the page numbers in the original edition where each of those chapters begins.
Wherever minor errors were encountered, and the editor could verify the correct data, these errors were corrected. As a rule, these many changes were not noted in the text. The truth is, the original version of Rayner's Life is not a desirable source for the general reader, especially students who are merely looking for information on Thomas Jefferson. In some cases it may be misleading. The persons most likely to be interested in Rayner's text as originally written are probably specialists studying the idiosyncrasies in literary styles of the early 19th century, and it was not the purpose of this edition to serve such an interest. Scholars interested in discovering Rayner's exact wording, punctuation, etc., used in a specific short quotation, and who do not have a copy of the original version of the text available to them, should feel free to contact the editor, and he will verify the precise form in which the passage exists in the original.
Eyler Robert Coates, Sr., Editor
LifeofJeff@eyler.freeservers.com
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