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Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The (Paperback)

by Benjamin Franklin (Author)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 160 pages
  • Publisher: Touchstone Books (1 Jan 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0743255062
  • ISBN-13: 978-0743255066
  • Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14.1 x 1.1 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 534,651 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Book Description

Benjamin Franklin's writings represent a long career of literary, scientific, and political efforts over a lifetime which extended nearly the entire eighteenth century. 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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A classic!, 25 Oct 2007
By Michael J. Brett "Michael Brett" (London, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
This review is from: The Autobiography (Dover Thrift) (Paperback)
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.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Insights from America's original innovator, 25 Oct 2007
By Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract.com" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
Benjamin Franklin, one of history's most remarkable human beings, was born in Boston in 1706. Largely self-taught, he became a respected scientist whose experiments on electricity received international acclaim. He invented the lightning rod, the Franklin stove, bifocals, the glass harmonica, an odometer and more. He was a self-made man who became wealthy as one of America's first commercial printers. He was a respected civic activist, a leading author, a politician and a political theorist. Many of the wise maxims expressed in his immortal Poor Richard's Almanack remain relevant and routinely quoted. Franklin is considered one of America's most accomplished diplomats. He served as minister to France during the Revolutionary War. In that post, he engineered a vital political alliance with the French, winning crucial military and financial aid. We think that anyone who loves history will find this spellbinding autobiography a rare delight. Franklin was on intimate terms with many of the most famous individuals in prerevolutionary America. Indeed, he seemed to have personal dealings with virtually everyone of merit in the New World. His autobiography, written in the best of the archaic language of the time, is a literary classic. Don't deprive yourself of this singular opportunity to learn what the American colonies were like during the prerevolutionary era, as reported by the extraordinary genius who first conceptualized the idea of the United States as an independent nation.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic US history, 11 Sep 2009
By Mr. W. J. Haines (East Sussex, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Autobiography (Dover Thrift) (Paperback)
This is just a great book. All I knew about Ben Franklin before reading it was he flew a kite in a storm. Reading it gave me a great insight into what America and indeed what the world was like in the 18th Century. Guess what, the things we take for granted like electric lights, phones, the Internet and fast global transport were not about 250 yeas ago. What was about was greed and self indulgence and love. It is a book all about self-improvement, community improvements and the importance of prudence and diligence. Because of his nature and ethics, Franklin avoids boasting about his achievements or dwelling on his disappointments in life but you will feel these come through the pages as a reader. I don't think you could read this book without being humbled and fascinated by the efforts and determination of our ancestors. I promise that despite the passing of over 200 years since his death in 1790 you will relate to his writings.
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5.0 out of 5 stars A classic!
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... Read more
Published on 25 Oct 2007 by Michael J. Brett

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