Illustrating the history of the University of Virginia would, of course, include Thomas Jefferson items since he is the founder and the initial architect of the institution. More interesting to me are William Faulkner’s typewriter and the ledger that shows that Edgar Allen Poe ran up 58 cents in library fines. The objects also include the cross burned on the lawn of the wife of a professor who wrote in favor of racial integration for the Saturday Evening Post and copies of The Sally Hemmings, an “underground newspaper” that was published as part of the protests that erupted after anti-Vietnam-War demonstrators were killed by the National Guard at Kent State University in 1970. The author, Brendan Wolfe, lives in Charlottesville. He is the editor of Encyclopedia Virginia, a project of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and has an MFA in non-fiction writing from the University of Iowa.
Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, 2017. 235 pages replete with full-color illustrations. Hardback in dust jacket