Dean Jessee is well known in the LDS community as a fine compiler and editor of source documents useful in the study of Mormon history. His contribution to the corpus of materials available to students and others is enormous.

Owners of the first edition will likely want to know why they should purchase this revised edition. I trust this brief review will assist you in making this decision. I will focus almost entirely on the differences between the two editions.

As per the title, this is a revised edition of the 1984 printing, representing a number of changes that deserve mentioning. These words from the Preface to the Second Edition are instructive:

Since the first edition of Personal Writings appeared, a number of technical and factual errors have been corrected. The first edition was also produced about the time several new Joseph Smith holograph writings were discovered, but have since been judged as forgeries. These documents -- six in number -- do not appear in this second edition. Four items appearing here were not in the first edition:

1830 March, To the reader 1835 September/December, To the Elders of the Church 1839 January 16, To Heber C. Kimball and Brigham Young 1844 June 11, Proclamation

In addition, endnotes are now footnotes; a new biographical register helps identify people mentioned in the text; and the maps are upgraded and improved.

Since the first edition we have commenced publishing the complete Papers of Joseph Smith which will consist of nearly a dozen volumes. This volume contains all the more personal documents from that larger collection.

I was particularly intrigued by mention of those documents that had been removed. I contacted Dean Jessee at BYU and asked for a list of those documents that had been deemed forgeries. He sent this nice response:

The five Hofmann forgeries removed from the 1984 edition of Personal Writings when it was revised in 2002 are as follows: the Anthon Transcript on p. 223, the Emma Smith letter on p. 277, the Hyrum Smith letter on p. 358, the Maria and Sarah Lawrence letter on p. 598, and the Jonathan Dunham letter on p. 616. How the forgeries were discovered is treated in Richard Turley's book titled Victims, published by the U. of Illinois Press in 1992.

Another aspect of the revised edition worth noting is the presentation of the photographs of the manuscripts. In the 1984 edition, the publisher generally printed two to a page, making the text difficult to read. In the new edition, the photographs are one to a page, much larger, much easier to read.

Should you purchase the new edition? I guess it depends on how important it is to you to have the most recent scholarship in an accessible format. If you don't own the first volume, this is an opportunity to own an important part of Mormon history. On the other hand, if you already own the first edition, this is an opportunity to bring your collection up to date.

I'm glad to have this book, and thank Dean Jessee, and others, for all their hard work in bringing this work to press.

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Jeff Needle
July 11, 2005