Autobiography and Other Writings

by Franklin, Benjamin; Seavey, Ormond

• ISBN13: 9780199554904
• ISBN10: 0199554900
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-01-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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 theDeclaration 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 wascontinually 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.

Table of Contents

Includes: Autobiography; 1726

Journal of a Voyage

Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind

The Kite Experiment

Poor Richard's Maxims

The Internal State of America

Speech in the Constitutional

Convention at the Conclusion of its Deliberations

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