The folder may include clippings, announcements, small exhibition catalogs, and other ephemeral items.

This is the only book to offer the complete correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Maria Cosway, a talented artist for whom Jefferson fell while in France. There is agreement in the secondary literature that Jefferson’s affection for Hemings was reciprocated. This book shows that that cannot be believed. Holowchak also shows that Hemings, through letters late in life, much longs for Jefferson’s company, suggestive of regret for not having earlier in life reciprocated Jefferson’s feelings—hence, the importance of a book with the complete correspondence. Holowchak also offers in the introduction a short psychobiography of Cosway that shows the significance of key early-life events—e.g., her childhood in a tavern, her removal to a convent, her introduction to art, and two singular dreams. Cosway would ever be tugged antipodally by the lure of earthy living as well as the asceticism of Catholic piety.

Visual and material sources are central to historical practice and this is a much-needed introduction to using artefacts as evidence.