William Clayton Journal to Be Published by Yale

The Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is pleased to announce its partnership with Yale University Press to publish the Nauvoo journal of William Clayton.

Clayton joined the church in England and moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1840. Between 1842 and 1846, he was a clerk, treasurer, temple recorder, and confidante of church president Joseph Smith and his wife Emma Hale Smith.

“It would be hard to overstate the importance of William Clayton’s journal for understanding the Nauvoo era of church history,” says Alex Smith, a volume editor on the project and a coeditor for six past volumes of the Joseph Smith Papers. “Many insights in the journal—about Joseph Smith’s daily activities and religious teachings, Nauvoo’s civic and ecclesiastical administration, the city’s social life, and the lived experience of plural marriage—are found nowhere else.”

Smith adds, “This informative, provocative, and inspiring journal ultimately recounts one man’s life-defining faith, and I hope any who read its often very personal entries will find a connection to Clayton and the other early Latter-day Saints who frequent these pages.”

Matthew McBride, the department’s director of publications, says, “We are so pleased to work with Yale to make this important text available to the public. They have earned their reputation as one of the best scholarly presses in our field. We are eager for scholars and members to read this long-awaited volume.”

The Church History Department announced its plans to publish William Clayton’s three-volume Nauvoo journal in 2017. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has owned the journal since 1854, when William Clayton donated it to the Church Historian’s Office. For the last eight years, a team of professional historians, archivists, and editors have transcribed, verified, and annotated the three volumes in the style of the Joseph Smith Papers.

The completed manuscript has been submitted to Yale and will go through the press’s peer review and editorial processes in the coming months. For updates about the journal’s publication, follow our upcoming newsletters.