The Autobiography and Other Writings [Paperback]

A comprehensive and insightful compilation of Benjamin Franklin’sThe Autobiographyand other essays which offers an in-depth look into the life of America’s most fascinating Founding Father.

Benjamin Franklin was a true Renaissance man: writer, publisher, scientist, inventor, diplomat, and politician. During his long life, he offered advice on attaining wealth, organized public institutions, contributed to the birth of a nation, and negotiated with foreign powers to ensure his country’s survival.
 
Through the words of the elder statesman himself,The Autobiography and Other Writingspresents a remarkable insight into the man and his accomplishments. Additional writings from Benjamin Franklin’s wife and son provide a more intimate portrait of the husband and father who became a legend in his own time.
 
Edited by L. Jesse Lemich
With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson
and an Afterword by Carla MulfordBenjamin Franklin(1706–90) was born in Boston. When he was twelve, his father apprenticed him to his half brother James as a printer. James was later the publisher of theNew England Courant, where Franklin’s first articles, “The Dogood Papers,” were published before he was seventeen. He went to Philadelphia in 1723, where he was befriended by William Keith, Governor of Pennsylvania, who offered to help Franklin get started in business. They went to England, where he hoped to purchase printing equipment, but he was soon deserted by Keith and again turned to printing for a livelihood. His privately printed “A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain” (1725) introduced him to leading Deists and other intellectuals in London. A year later, he returned to Philadelphia, and by 1730, he had been appointed public printer for Pennsylvania. In 1731, he established the first circulation library in the United States and, in 1743&ndashlÓ+