The Autobiography and Other Writings (Everyman’s Library Classics Series)

Product Description

Benjamin Franklin’s account of his rise from poverty and obscurity to affluence and fame has charmed every generation of readers since it first appeared. Begun as a collection of anecdotes for his son, the memoir grew into a history of his remarkable achievements in the literary, scientific, and political realms. A printer, inventor, scientist, diplomat, and statesman, Franklin was also a brilliant writer whose wit and wisdom shine on every page. His
Autobiography has deservedly become the most widely read American autobiography of all time—the self-portrait of a quintessential American.

Franklin was a remarkably prolific writer, and is equally beloved for his humorous, philosophical, parodic, and satirical writings, parables, and maxims, which he published under an astonishing number of pen names, including Poor Richard, the Busy-Body, and Silence Dogood. This hardcover edition of
The Autobiography and Other Writings contains a varied selection of these, including “The Kite Experiment,” “A Parable Against Persecution,” “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind,” “Rules for Making Oneself a Disagreeable Companion,” and “The Way to Wealth.”

About the Author

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790) was a printer, writer, inventor, scientist, diplomat, and statesman.
JILL LEPORE is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at 
The New Yorker. Her books include 
Book of Ages, a finalist for the National Book Award; 
New York Burning, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; 
The Name of War, winner of the Bancroft Prize;
 The Mansion of Happiness, which was short-listed for the 2013 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction; and 
The Secret History of Wonder Woman. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from the Introduction by Jill Lepore

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Or, from the Printer to the Reader

‘‘I could as easily make a Collection for you of all the past Parings of my Nails,’’ Benjamin Franklin wrote to his sister Jane in 1767, after she asked him to send her all his old essays on politics. It was as if, in dashing off articles, he’d been sloughing off pages, like a snake shedding skin.[1] Franklin liked to think of himself as a book: a man of letters, spine of bone, flesh of paper, blood of ink, his skin a cover of leather, stitched. When he wrote, he molted.He could be as sneaky as a snake, too, something to bear in mind when reading his autobiography, as sly an account as anything Franklin ever allowed himself the grave indiscretion of putting on paper.

Franklin was awriter, a scientist, and a statesman but, first and last, he was a printer. He knew every form and each style, every font and each type. In his shop, he sold quills and inkstands, foolscap and folios, almanacs and spelling books. He bought rags for making paper. ‘‘READY MONEY for old RAGS, may be had of the Printer thereof,’’ he announced in the pages of his newspaper, the
Pennsylvania Gazette.[2] He owned papermills and printing presses. He printed newspapers and novels, magazines and treatises. He sold, in his shop, an entire inventory of blank forms: ‘‘Bills of Lading bound and unbound, Common Blank Bonds for Money, Bonds with Judgment, Counterbonds, Arbitration Bonds, Arbitration Bonds with Umpirage, Bail Bonds, Counterbonds to save Bail harmless, Bills of Sale, Powers of Attorney, Writs, Summons, Apprentices Indentures, Servants Indentures, Penal Bills, Promissory Notes, &c. all the Blanks in the most authentick Forms, and correctly printed.’’[3]He was a jack-of-allpages:
authentick, and correctly printed.

Aprinter ofmoney, a trader in the authentic, amaster of every form, Benjamin Franklin had a genius for counterfeit. Long after he stopped buying rags, soaking them, pressing theminto pages, gracing them with ink, and selling them as books – turning rags into riches – he signed himself ‘‘B. Franklin,