The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
by Benjamin Franklin
List Price:
Our Price: $1.99
You Save: $10.01 (83%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Benjamin FranklinEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-12-23
ISBN: 0743255062
Number of pages: 160
Publisher: Touchstone
Book Reviews of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Book Review: An Eighteenth Century Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is a kind of time machine that puts you straight into the Eighteenth Century. Benjamin Franklin comes over as a fearless and open character, although he is at pains to present himself as a solid and successful businessman in the printing industry. He is very much a man of his time. He concerns himself with God and self-improvement, then after he marries he says how glad he is that he did not catch VD from 'certain low women' beforehand. This, certainly consciously, echoes St Paul's advice on why people should marry.
Within the text are probably whole layers of meaning and allusions to contemporary events and news culture that are lost on twenty-first century readers. He is certainly working within religious and classical traditions of what an autobiography should be: a conversation with God, carried on in public? or moral examples and advice to the young.
Sometimes he is having a laugh at the autobiographical and literary form itself. For example, it is a commmonplace of Eighteenth Century Literature that you-the writer-had no intention of publishing your book until you were prevailed upon by your friends or the public. Franklin opens the second section of his autobiography with a letter purportedly from a Quaker who says that a life of Franklin would be worth even more than 'all Plutarch's Lives put together.'This must have raised a laugh in his local club, his 'junto' as he calls it.
However, within the same pages, Franklin describes, clearly with pride, how he swims from Chelsea to Blackfriars in London-which is quite a physical feat, it being two or three miles. He is also at some pains to place much of his financial success on hard work, simplicity and the avoidance of alcohol. These aspects of his life would bequite important for his Low Church readers.
Interestingly-as negative examples- he reports that his London workmates routinely down six pints of strong ale a day, both at home and in the printing office. For his contemporaries, this was unusual from the point of view of the English printers being not just drunkards, but -for his audience- very old fashioned. English people in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuroes -including babies hence the phrases 'tiny tots' 'small beer' etc.- drank beer and ale as drinking street pump water was correctly suspected to cause disease.
Here, through the implication that beer drinking is old fashioned and unhealthy, especially when compared to American coffee drinking, Franklin is presenting his American readers with the idea that-once again- the Colonies, rather than being a backwater, are more modern that their British counterparts in the Imperial Capital of London.
At the heart of his political thinking seems to be the moral rather than political idea that with moral virtue-and thus God- on your side, you are unstoppable, and sees the United States' future greatness to lie in this.
He takes pains to connect political greatness with the moral quality and education of individual citizens, laying particular emphasis on literacy, and reports with pride how he helped to establish the first lending library in the United States, in Philadelphia.
As a moralist rather than a politician, his republican beliefs do not seem as universal as, say, those of revolutionaries like Robespierre or Tom Paine. For him, the American Republic seems to be uniquely American. At one point he is pleased to report, and say that it is an aspect of his success in life that he has dined with a king, and names him as the King of Denmark. Tom Paine would never have dined with a king, unless it were to poison him!
Now the non-PC bit as bang go his green credentials. The 1726 Journal has Franklin helping to kill and eat dolphins while travelling by sea. He says they are good to eat, and regards them as fish rather than mammals.
Enjoy this book!
Historical Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Historical Books
Alexander Hamiltonby Ron Chernow
Penguin Audio; Published: 2004-04-26; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $171.76
America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction (Penguin Classics)by John Steinbeck
Penguin Classics; Published: 2003-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops:
Sailing Alone around the World (Penguin Classics)by Joshua Slocum
Penguin Classics; Published: 1999-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.94
Price in other shops:
The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sistersby Charlotte Mosley
Harper; Published: 2007-11-06; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.58
Price in other shops:
Profiles in Courage (slipcased edition): Decisive Moments in the Lives of Celebrated Americansby John F. Kennedy
Harper; Published: 2006-10-17; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $8.99
Price in other shops:
Lost Years: A Memoir 1945 - 1951by Christopher Isherwood
HarperCollins; Published: 2000-09-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $18.14
Price in other shops:
Thomas Jefferson: A Lifeby Willard Sterne Randall
Harper Perennial; Published: 1994-06-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.18
Price in other shops:
The Professor and the Madmanby Simon Winchester
Harper; Published: 1998-08-26; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.74
Price in other shops:
Patton: A Genius for Warby Carlo D'Este, este, Carlo D'
Harpercollins; Published: 1995-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $49.94
Stonewall Jacksonby James Robertson
Macmillan Pub.; Published: 1997-02-18; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $47.66
Price in other shops:
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
The Coquette (Early American Women Writers)by Hannah W. Foster
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1987-02-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.88
Price in other shops:
US: A Narrative History, Volume 1: To 1877by James West Davidson, Brian DeLay, Christine Leigh Heyrman, Mark Lytle, Michael Stoff
McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages; Published: 2008-12-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $48.00
Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma: The American Portraits Seriesby Camilla Townsend
Hill and Wang; Published: 2005-09-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
Notes on the State of Virginia (Penguin Classics)by Thomas Jefferson
Penguin Group USA; Penguin Classics; Published: 1998-12-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.50
Price in other shops:
Civil Disobedience and Other Essays (Dover Thrift Editions)by Henry David Thoreau
Dover Publications; Dover Publications; Published: 1993-05-20; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: with Related Documents (Bedford Series in History & Culture)by Mary Rowlandson
Bedford/St. Martin's; Published: 1997-02-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.05
Self-Reliance and Other Essays (Dover Thrift Editions)by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dover Publications; Published: 1993-10-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.53
Price in other shops:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself (Bedford Series in History and Culture)by Frederick Douglass
Bedford/St. Martin's; Published: 2002-12-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.99
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Dover Thrift Editions)by Frederick Douglass
Dover Publications; Dover Publications; Published: 1995-04-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Common Sense (Dover Thrift Editions)by Thomas Paine
Dover Publications; Published: 1997-04-22; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops: