Browsing: Diary of John Adams, Volume 4

3. This listing appears to have been compiled by JA partly by consulting the shelves of his library and partly from memory. Like the books he mentions earlier in his Autobiography (16 April, above) as having been acquired to teach himself French, most of the works he lists here can still be found among his books in the Boston Public Library, together with a great many others on French history and government and on European diplomacy generally. See the following entries in the Catalogue of JA's Library: Avaux, Négotiations de Monsieur le Comte d'Avaux en Hollande, 2 copies (p. 17); Estrades, Lettres, mémoires et négotiations … en Italie, en Angleterre & en Hollande, 2 copies (p. 86); Arnaud, Cardinal d'Ossat, Letres (p. 186); Jean Baptiste Colbert, Marquis de Torcy, Mémoires (p. 54); Vertot d'Aubeuf, Ambassades de Messieurs de Noailles en Angleterre (p. 255); Mably, Des principes des négotiations and Le droit public de I'Europe, 2 edns. (p. 154); Dumont, comp., Corps universel diplomatique du droit des gens (p. 79); Rousset de Missy, Recueil historique d'actes, négotiations, méemoires et traitéz(p. 217); [Freschot,] Histoire du congrés et de la paix d'Utrecht (p. 98); Velly, Histoire de France (p. 254); Mézeray, Abrége chronologique de l'histoire de France, 2 edns. (p. 167); Jacques Auguste de Thou, Histoire universelle, 2 edns. (p. 244); Francoise Bertaut de Motteville, Mémoires (p. 174); Duchesse de Montpensier, Mémoires (p. 172).

Two other works listed here by JA are still in the family library at Quincy (MQA), bearing JQA's bookplate but quite likely having first belonged to JA. These are Pierre Jeannin, Les négotiations de M. le Président Jeannin, 4 vols.in 2, Amsterdam, 1695 (see JA's Diary, 16 July 1779 and note 3 there); and Abraham van Wicquefort, L'ambassadeur et ses fonctions, 2 vols., The Hague, 1681 (also another copy, 2 vols., Cologne, 1715).