Browsing: Diary of John Adams, Volume 2

19. JA acquired five volumes of the Journal des sçavans ( Catalogue of JA's Library , p. 132). On this day also, according to a separate and fragmentary record of book purchases elsewhere in the present letterbook, he bought “14 Exemplaires Loix de l'Amerique,” paying 35 livres for them. This was a work entitled Recueil des loix constitutives des colonies angloises, confédéréés sous la dénomination d'Etats-Unis de l'Amérique-Septentrionale ..., Paris, 1778, compiled by one Regnier from the texts of the state constitutions and other American state papers that had appeared in the Affaires de l'Angleterre et de l'Amérique. Its curious bibliographical history has been related by Gilbert Chinard in Amer. Philos. Soc, Year Book 1943, p. 89–96. Five copies remain among JA's books in the Boston Public Library, one of them bearing MS notes in his hand.