Forged in Fire The Jefferson Collection at the Library of Congress

A Lecture by Mr. Mark Dimunation,
Chief of Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress

The nucleus of the Library of Congress was forged in fire. In 1815 Congress purchased Thomas Jefferson’s personal library - then the largest private book collection available in North America - to replace the congressional library destroyed when the British burned the U.S. Capitol the previous year. Jefferson’s collection would serve as the core of the Library of Congress for the next thirty-five years, until catastrophic fire again struck the Capitol on Christmas Eve 1851, destroying two-thirds of Thomas Jefferson’s original collection. Reconstructing this landmark collection provides fresh insights into the mind of Thomas Jefferson, the world of the Enlightenment, and the nature of collecting in the eighteenth century.