C. & A. Conrad & Company was a bookselling and publishing concern at 30 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. It adopted that name in 1807 when Cornelius and Andrew Conrad joined a firm established in 1800 by their brother John Conrad. In 1807 Conrad & Co. contracted with Meriwether Lewis to publish the journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, but the firm failed in 1812 before the project could be completed (Jackson, Letters of Lewis and Clark description begins Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783–1854, 2d ed., 1978, 2 vols. description ends , 2:392–7).

TJ is not known to have acquired the Conrad edition of The plays of William Shakespeare (Philadelphia, 1809–10), which reprinted a version edited by Samuel Johnson, George Steevens, and Isaac Reed that TJ did own (Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 1952–59, 5 vols. description ends no. 4539). TJ had subscribed in 1807 to Anne Louis de Tousard, American Artillerist’s Companion, or Elements of Artillery, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1809–13; Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 1952–59, 5 vols. description ends no. 1160). The work was issued serially, and this letter is subjoined to a bill to TJ for $12 for six numbers sent individually between 27 Nov. 1807 and 25 May 1809, with a subjoined penciled notation that another $2 had been billed for a seventh number of this work on 20 Oct. 1809. After a reminder from Conrad & Co. and some initial confusion about whether this bill had already been paid, TJ remitted $12 in 1811 (Conrad & Co. to TJ, [received 15 Apr. 1810]; TJ to Conrad & Co., 24 Apr. 1811; MB description begins James A. Bear Jr. and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 2:1265). In 1800 Michael and John Conrad and Daniel rapine had opened Washington’s first bookstore (Bryan, National Capital description begins Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, A History of the National Capital: From its Foundation through the Period of the Adoption of the Organic Act, 1914, 2 vols. description ends , 1:383, 435, 516).