Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

A little about the book

Benjamin Franklin looks back on the making of a printer, tradesman, reader, and public-minded citizen who was continually inventing new ways to be useful. Beginning with family history and an apprenticeship in Boston, he follows the uncertain choices that carried him to Philadelphia and London. Work, friendship, money, and intellectual curiosity are closely connected, and Franklin is as interested in the habits behind achievement as in the achievements themselves.

The account combines episodes of adventure with candid experiments in self-improvement. Franklin describes his failures as well as his plans, turning a personal history into a conversation about how character might be formed through deliberate practice. His projects for libraries, discussion groups, civic institutions, and scientific inquiry also show a community being made alongside an individual career. The autobiography remains unfinished, which gives its story an open edge: readers meet a developing colonial public figure rather than a complete retrospective of the American Revolution.

Things You May Not Know About Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

• A letter becomes a book. Franklin begins by addressing his son William, explaining why a record of family circumstances and personal choices might be useful.
• Thirteen virtues to practice. His famous improvement scheme turns qualities such as temperance, industry, and humility into a practical program of regular self-examination.
• An unfinished life story. The narrative does not carry Franklin through the full revolutionary and diplomatic career for which many readers now know him.
• Books as a shared resource. The establishment of a subscription library appears among Franklin’s examples of how personal interests could become lasting civic institutions.
• An illustrated reference edition. This Gutenberg text reproduces an edition edited by Frank Woodworth Pine, with illustrations by E. Boyd Smith and supplementary material.