Since the presentation by Garland Publishing in 1983 of my Thomas Jefferson: A Comprehensive Annotated Bibliography of Writings About Him (1826-1980), a great deal of significant scholarship about Thomas Jefferson has continued to appear. This bibliography is a successor to that earlier work, and taken together with the earlier bibliography, it presents the only up-to-date record of the writing about Jefferson since his death.

The earlier work attempted to record and comment briefly upon books, monographs, chapters in books, and essays that focused upon Thomas Jefferson and his work and appeared in the years between his death and 1980. The present volume updates that bibliography by describing similar materials that have appeared in the decade of the 1980s, and it also records items overlooked for one reason or another in the earlier work. It follows the same formal criteria for inclusion as before, excluding newspaper items, entries in general encyclopedias, and collections of Jefferson's writing that do not include a more or less substantial introduction or scholarly apparatus. It continues the comprehensive aims of the previous bibliography, citing scholarly works as well as those intended for popular and even juvenile audiences. As part of the basic research for this volume, I consulted all possible bibliographies and indexes of history, literature, fine arts, law, education, philosophy, biography, etc. A few of those sources listed some rather peripheral items, and in the case of the present work I chose to include them, allowing the annotations to suggest whether they might be of only minor importance for those interested primarily in Thomas Jefferson. Like the earlier volume, this work is not confined to listing works that appeared in English but also records items in Russian, Polish, Czech, French, Danish, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese.

This bibliography differs in some ways from the earlier volume, however. Since the number of items to be covered is smaller and spread over a ten-year period, I chose to list them chronologically according to year of publication. The greater number of items and the century-and-a-half time span of the earlier bibliography made an arrangement by subject appropriate there, but the topical index in this volume should answer the needs of researchers into a particular facet of Jeffersoniana. And the chronological listing will, I hope, give researchers a better sense of unfolding arguments and discoveries about Jefferson. This volume also differs from its predecessor in having considerably fuller annotations. Because the materials listed here, particularly scholarly items, are those most likely to be consulted by people doing scholarly work themselves, more complete accounts of the argument and ambitions of works listed seemed useful. I have tried to maintain some sort of critical edge indicating what seem to be substantial works in one way or another and occasionally pointing to the limitations of others. Items intended for a popular readership are not broken on the wheel of scholarly standards but are simply presented for what they are. The more elaborate accounts of scholarly items should give a good sense of the nature of the last decade's learned discourse, and the accounts of the more popular items should be of use for anyone wishing to chart the continuing course of the Jeffersonian image in the American mind.

The first chapter covers items overlooked in the previous bibliography, and the next ten chapters cover the writing appearing year by year from 1981 through 1990. These are followed by a topical index and by an index of authors. Thomas Jefferson is once again referred to in abbreviated fashion as TJ, and the previous bibliography is referred to as TJCAB.