Inferpedia - an encyclopedia of the missing

Public research preview — Inferpedia is a working encyclopedia of what's missing, opened while the scaffolding is still up. Published articles carry their sources and scores; everything less finished is labelled as exactly what it is.

Positive reconstruction · reader-scoped, not an inferred-absence lacuna

This reconstruction covers the readable fraction of Thomas Jefferson's formation -- attested reading and writing only, not the whole of a life.

Thomas Jefferson and The Spirit of the Laws

Thomas Jefferson's attested relationship to The Spirit of the Laws.

Thomas Jefferson is attested as having owned this work by Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu.

Evidence ledger

Sowerby's catalogue documents that Jefferson's library included Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws, a text Jefferson annotated and drew on for his own commonplace-book abstracts.