Front cover image for Autobiography and other writings

Autobiography and other writings

Benjamin Franklin's writings represent a long career of literary, scientific, and political efforts over a lifetime which extended nearly the entire eighteenth century. Franklin's achievements range from inventing the lightning rod to publishing Poor Richard's Almanack to signing the Declaration of Independence. In his own lifetime he knew prominence not only in America but in Britain and France as well. This volume includes Franklin's reflections on such diverse questions as philosophy and religion, social status, electricity, American national characteristics, war, and the status of women. Nearly sixty years separate the earliest writings from the latest, an interval during which Franklin was continually balancing between the puritan values of his upbringing and the modern American world to which his career served as prologue. This edition provides a new text of the Autobiography, established with close reference to Franklin's original manuscript. It also includes a new transcription of the 1726 journal, and several pieces which have recently been identified as Franklin's own work
Print Book, English, 1993
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993
Autobiography
xxix, 361 pages ; 19 cm
9780192827333, 9780199554904, 9780192836694, 0192827332, 0199554900, 0192836692
25787951
Silence Dogood
To 'your honour': defense of James Franklin to Samuel Sewall
1726 Journal
Busy-body
Epitaph
On simplicity
The death of infants
Letter of Josiah & Abiah Franklin
Apology for the young man in goal
Old mistresses apologue
The speech of Miss Polly baker
Observations concerning the increase of mankind
The kite experiment
The way to wealth
Poor Richard's maxims
'Homespun's' further defense of Indian corn
An edict by the King of Prussia
Letter of William Strahan
Letter to Benjamin Vaughan
The whistle
Letter to George Washington
Letter to Joseph Priestley
Remarks concerning the savages of North-America
Information to those who would remove to America
Letter to Samuel Mather
Letter to William Franklin
The art of procuring pleasant dreams
The internal state of America
Speech in the Constitutional Convention at the conclusion of its deliberations
Letter to Ezra Stiles