Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography

One of 17 children, Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706. He ended his formal education at the age of 10 and began working as an apprentice at a newspaper. Running away to Philadelphia at 17, he worked for a printer, later opening his own print shop. Franklin was a man of many talents and interests. As a writer, he published a colonial newspaper and the well-known Poor Richard's Almanack, which contains his famous maxims. He authored many political and economic works, such as The Way To Wealth and Journal of the Negotiations for Peace. He is responsible for many inventions, including the Franklin stove and bifocal eyeglasses. He conducted scientific experiments, proving in one of his most famous ones that lightning and electricity were the same. As a politically active citizen, he helped draft the Declaration of Independence and lobbied for the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. He also served as ambassador to France. He died in April of 1790 at the age of 84.

J.A. Leo Lemay is H. F. du Pont Winterthur Professor of English at the University of Delaware. His publications include Men of Letters in Colonial Maryland, A Calendar of American Poetry in the Colonial Newspapers and Magazines, and The Frontiersman from Lout to Hero. He has just completed New England's Annoyances: America's First Folk Song and is writing a book on the creation of American humor, 1607-1800.

P.M. Zall, Professor of English and American Studies, California State University, Los Angeles, has edited Nathaniel Ward's Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America, Comical Spirit of Seventy-Six: The Humor of Francis Hopkinson, Ben Franklin Laughing: Anecdotes from Original Sources by and about Ben Franklin, and most recently, Abe Lincoln Laughing. He is compiling a bibliography of English and American jestbooks.