U.Va. gift augments national collection

University President John T. Casteen III recently presented to the Library of Congress a copy of one of the books lost from the collection that Thomas Jefferson sold to the library in 1814.

The Library of Congress has been searching for copies of a number of highly sought-after books from Jefferson's collection -- about 780 in all -- to replace volumes that were destroyed in a Christmas Eve fire in 1851.

At the suggestion of Albert H. Small, a member of both the University's Board of Visitors and the Library of Congress's Madison Council, U.Va. librarians reviewed the list of missing volumes and found that the University possessed two copies of Constantin-Francois Volney's The ruins: or A survey of the revolutions of empires. This translation of Volney's work, published in 1796 by William A. Davis in New York, is the same edition as the one Jefferson sold to Congress.