Tod E. Jones
A Brief Autobiography

I am a native of San Diego, and although it hasn't been my home for most of my adult life, I am always happy to return to the most beautiful of U.S. cities. Since leaving San Diego, I have planted shallow roots in such places as Grand Canyon Village, Fairbanks, Colorado Springs, and a small town north of Little Rock called Searcy. I relocated to the east coast in 1993, upon being accepted into the doctoral program of the English Department at the University of Maryland. Before acquiring my "lion's skin" (the big diploma) in 1997, I had already begun planting my roots a little deeper into the D.C. metropolitan area.

In 1995 I met my wife, Karen Froslid-Jones, at a popular coffeeshop and bookstore in D.C., Politics and Prose. We were married three years later. We are both very much involved in the academic community. Karen is the Director of the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment at American University, and I am adjunct faculty at the University of Maryland. As a wedding gift to ourselves, we adopted a three-year-old from what is now called OBG Cocker Spaniel Rescue. We named her Grendel, after a unique character in an Old English epic poem. Two years later, thinking that Grendel (to your right in the photo--bottom row, of course) might enjoy some male companionship, we returned to the rescue center, where we picked up Augie (to your left in the photo). They are both affectionate little beasts, generally well-behaved, and a pleasure to have around the house.

I have had two books published that deal with the history of ideas and persons important to the liberal Anglican tradition: The Broad Church: A Biography of a Movement (Lexington Press, 2003) and The Cambridge Platonists: A Brief Introduction; with Eight Letters of Dr. Antony Tuckney and Dr. Benjamin Whichcote (University Press of America, 2005).

I am the founder and president of the Francis William Newman Society, a non-profit organization, for which I have recently completed a critical edition of The Works of Francis William Newman on Religion (Philosophy Documentation Center, 2009). This edition, in ten volumes, provides readers with the texts of over 90 separate works, each in the final version approved by the author, together with notes on all textual variants from earlier published versions. Each volume is separately indexed.

For a change of pace, I sometimes enjoy repairing damaged or deteriorating books in my library. I've created a link from the menu to your left to some before-and-after photos of books I've repaired.