Dumas Malone


Dumas Malone was an American historian, biographer, and editor noted for his six-volume biography on Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson and His Time, for which he received the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for history. In 1983 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Early life and education

Malone was born at Coldwater, Mississippi, on January 10, 1892, the son of clergyman John W. and suffragist schoolteacher, Lillian Kemp Malone. He received his bachelor's degree in 1910 from Emory College. In 1916 he received his divinity degree from Yale University. Between 1917 and 1919 during the First World War, he became a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps. Following the war, he returned to Yale University where he obtained his Master's and doctorate degrees. He won the John Addison Porter prize in 1923 for his dissertation The Public Life of Thomas Cooper, 1783–1839 .
The linguist and historian Kemp Malone is his older brother.
He married Elizabeth Gifford in 1925, and they had two children.

Career

Malone served on the faculty of Yale University, Columbia University, and the University of Virginia, where he was the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History. He was a Director of the Harvard University Press and served as editor of the original Dictionary of American Biography in 1929. His first contribution to historical scholarship was a still authoritative biography of the American political commentator and educator Thomas Cooper.
He is best known for his six-volume biography of Thomas Jefferson, published between 1948 and 1981, for which he earned the 1975 Pulitzer Prize. Among the many contributions of this authoritative study was Malone's inclusion in each volume of a detailed timeline of Jefferson's activities and frequent travels in his life. Malone's volumes were widely praised for their lucid and graceful writing style, for their rigorous and thorough scholarship, and for their attention to Jefferson's evolving constitutional and political thought.
The six volumes, originally published by Atlantic/Little, Brown, and republished by the University of Virginia Press in 2005, were:
Malone also published a set of lectures, Thomas Jefferson as Political Leader, with the University of California Press.
His eyesight deteriorated markedly as he became older, making it necessary to use various technologies such as voice recorders and a Visualtek to enlarge texts while writing his last two Jefferson books. in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Legacy and honors

Malone died on December 27, 1986 at Charlottesville, Virginia. He is buried at the University of Virginia Cemetery and Columbarium in Charlottesville.