Episodes

> Prologue Episode 1 Episode 2 Episode 3 Episode 4 Episode 5 Episode 6 Episode 7 Episode 8 Episode 9 Episode 10 Episode 11 Episode 12 Episode 13 Episode 14 Episode 15 Episode 16 Epilogue

> Overview Primary Sources Secondary Sources Clippings Commentary Essays Teaching Images

Dudar, Helen. "Merchant Ivory's special take on Thomas Jefferson." Smithsonian 25.12 (1995): 94-105.

Based on interviews with the filmmakers. Leisurely factual and informational overview about the making of the film. Of interest, though, is that the genesis of the film was in director Ivory's reading of Oliver Bernier's Pleasure and Privilege: Life in France, Naples, and America, 1770-1790, after which he then went on to read Fawn Brodie's Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History that provided "details of Jefferson's life that was history in technicolor." Nothing in-depth about the film itself or the issues it raises except Ivory's remark regarding reactions to the film as an "assault on history": "It's fine that he had 125 slaves. That he might have fathered seven children with an almost-white concubine who was his wife's half sister is too much to think about."

Jefferson in Paris. Dir. James Ivory. Perf. Nick Nolte, Greta Scacchi, Thandie Newton. Touchstone Pictures, 1995.

Jefferson, Thomas. Jefferson in Love: The Love Letters between Thomas Jefferson & Maria Cosway. Ed. John P. Kaminski. Madison: Madison House, 1999.

http://books.google.com/books?id=2lsJZ7gMlXUC&dq=%22jefferson+in+love%22&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=rQj3Eq2u7v&sig=nHXiwrie1ihx-NkEMDBtcmOkiyI#v=onepage&q&f=false

Provides a detailed look into the complicated relationship of Maria Cosway and Thomas Jefferson. The letters help demonstrate the tragedy that loomed over their relationship from the beginning. He was an American political figure, and she was married not only to her husband, but also to Europe. She knew she could never leave either, and he could never remain in Europe. The letters begin by demonstrating a very romantic nature and slowly become more sad as separation becomes inevitable and the fire fades from their relationship.

Jefferson, Thomas. “Dialogue between My Head and My Heart.” Mr. Jefferson's Women by Jon Kukla. New York: Knopf, 2007. 202-14. Also printed in Fawn M. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (New York: Norton, 1974).

In the spring of 1786, while serving as the US minister to France, Jefferson met—and probably fell in love with—“a young, married Englishwoman named Maria Cosway. Just after Cosway left Paris in October, Jefferson composed this remarkable letter to her in which his head argued with his heart. He rallies back and forth between the emotional and rational aspects of having lost Maria Cosway and the pain it has caused him.”

Kaminski, John P. Jefferson in Love: The Love Letters between Thomas Jefferson & Maria Cosway. Madison: Madison House, 1999.

Provides a detailed look into the complicated relationship of Maria Cosway and Thomas Jefferson. The letters help demonstrate the tragedy that loomed over their relationship from the beginning. He was an American political figure, and she was married not only to her husband, but also to Europe. She knew she could never leave either, and he could never remain in Europe. The letters begin by demonstrating a very romantic nature and slowly become more sad as separation becomes inevitable and the fire fades from their relationship.

Kimball, Marie. Jefferson: The Scene of Europe, 1784 to 1789. New York: Coward-McCann, 1950.

Jefferson seems to have been swept completely off his feet by the beautiful Maria. He speaks of her "modesty, beauty, and that softness of disposition which is the ornament of her sex and charm of ours." Her contemporaries described her as being "a golden-haired, languishing Anglo-Italian, graceful to affectation, and highly accomplished, especially in music." Her various portraits attest to the deep blue of her eyes, her fair skin, to an imperiousness and a dainty voluptuousness that could not but be beguiling. From these sources, as well as from her letters, we see that she was the essence of femininity. An occasional saucy pout, the soft trace of a foreign accent -- English was not her native language, and she wrote it with some difficulty -- were completely devastating to her admirers. And Jefferson was no exception.

Kimball, Marie. Jefferson: The Scene of Europe, 1784 to 1789. New York: Coward-McCann, 1950.