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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

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Franklin's autobiography, introduction.

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"Franklin gave us the definitive formation of the American Dream" —J. A. Leo Lemay

Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography is both an important historical document and Franklin's major literary work. It was not only the first autobiography to achieve widespread popularity, but after two hundred years remains one of the most enduringly popular examples of the genre ever written. As such, it provides not only the story of Franklin’s own remarkably influential career, but maps out a strategy for self-made success in the context of emerging American nationhood. The Autobiography is a major source for exploring Franklin’s ideas on wealth and virtue as well as his motivations in pursuing a long life of active civic participation. It is also uniquely useful as the story of a successful working printer in eighteenth-century North America, revealing much about the art and business of the printer's trade that is not documented with such coherence elsewhere.

Written over the course of several decades and never completed, Franklin's Autobiography is divided into four distinct sections that differ both in tone and in focus—though Franklin always intended the work to stand as a whole. As outlined by editors J. A. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall , Part One was penned while Franklin was in England in July-August of 1771. This is also when Franklin most likely drew up his outline for the entire work. By the summer of 1782, both documents had been seen by a friend, Abel James, who wrote to Franklin urging him to resume the project. Franklin drafted Part Two in 1784 while living in France. Part Three, dating from 1788-89, was composed when a Franklin now in his eighties had, after a long and distinguished international career, returned home to settle his affairs. This is also when he added most of his revisions. The shortest section, Part Four, was written when Franklin was in poor health in the last few months of his life.

Part One of Franklin's memoir is addressed as a letter to Franklin's son William, perhaps as a literary conceit—and although the two would later become estranged over the events of the American Revolution, Franklin still preserved this aspect of the work. In fact, Revolutionary affairs figure little in the memoir. The four Autobiography sections completed by Franklin in his lifetime examine the earlier and formative periods of his life: his childhood and youth, his apprenticeship and flight to Philadelphia, his accomplishments as a printer and then as a scientist, and his civic involvements as a resident of Pennsylvania. Due to public interest in Franklin's later political accomplishments, most early printed editions of the Autobiography include added text written by others, which rounds out the story of Franklin's years as a national and international diplomat.

The Autobiography , known variously as a Life or Memoirs before the 1840s, has an unusual and complicated publication history, with several competing versions of the text in circulation at once. Franklin named his grandson William Temple Franklin as his literary executor, but Temple Franklin was slow to bring an authorized edition of Franklin's memoir to print. Soon after Franklin’s death in April, 1790, unauthorized extracts appeared in two Philadelphia magazines: Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine by Henry Stuber (installments from May 1790 through June 1791) and American Museum by Matthew Carey (July and November, 1790). The first book-length edition appeared in French, produced in Paris in 1791—but this translation was based on an early copy of Franklin's manuscript and included only an unrevised version of Part One. Like the magazine pieces, it also contained biographical material of which Franklin was not the author.

A book-length English edition, The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin , was published in London in 1793, a year after it had already appeared in German and Swedish . This English version was, however, a translation back into English from the 1791 French, so that the still-partial twice-translated text differed considerably from Franklin’s intended words. A second English retranslation appeared in London the same year, first in installments in Lady's Magazine , then as part of a two-volume set of Franklin's collected Works .  By 1794, American editions printed in New York , Philadelphia and elsewhere, again based on one or another of the retranslated versions, began to circulate. And so it went back and forth across versions, languages, translations and continents for another twenty-four years. A 1798 Vie de Benjamin Franklin , for example, translated into French the English retranslation of the earlier French version of Part One, but also included a directly translated Part Two, which had not yet appeared in English.

Although grandson William Temple Franklin's Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin of 1818 quickly became the standard version once it was available, it too was flawed. Mistakenly based on another still-incomplete copy of Franklin's manuscript, it did not include Franklin's final revisions of the text, or any of Part Four. Part Four first appeared in Mémoires sur la Vie de Benjamin Franklin , a Paris edition of 1828, available once again in French translation before it appeared in English.  It was not until 1868 and the publication of John Bigelow's Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin —at last based directly on Franklin's final manuscript—that all four parts of the work were at last printed together in their final form, and in English.

Please note: bibliographies and/or links to the items mentioned here are available in other sections of this guide:

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• The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. (Complete)
• Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790.
• Abernathy, Juliam Willis, 1853- ed.

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• New York, E. Maynard & Co. [c1892]
• -  Title vignette.
• -  Also available in digital form.
• 192 p. 16 cm.

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• E302.6.F7 A2 1892

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• https://lccn.loc.gov/12032369

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• Abernathy, Juliam Willis
• Franklin, Benjamin

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Chicago citation style:

Franklin, Benjamin, and Juliam Willis Abernathy. The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Complete . [New York, E. Maynard & Co, 1892] Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/12032369/.

APA citation style:

Franklin, B. & Abernathy, J. W. (1892) The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Complete . [New York, E. Maynard & Co] [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/12032369/.

MLA citation style:

Franklin, Benjamin, and Juliam Willis Abernathy. The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Complete . [New York, E. Maynard & Co, 1892] Pdf. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/12032369/>.

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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin begins with an explanation, addressed to Franklin ’s son, William Franklin , concerning why Franklin has undertaken to write his life history. He says it may be useful to his posterity (offspring) but also he hopes to gratify his own vanity. He goes on to describe some of his relations, including his grandfather, Thomas Franklin Sr. , and his father, Josiah Franklin . Then Franklin begins the narrative of his life, how he was born in Boston in 1706, was briefly sent to grammar school around the age of eight, and eventually was apprenticed to his brother James Franklin as a printer.

From his earliest childhood, reading was very important to Franklin as a means of self-improvement. While working under his brother, he read frequently, adopted a vegetarian diet, and submitted several anonymous pieces of writing to his brother’s newspaper, the New England Courant . His brother published them, swelling Franklin’s pride, and, eventually, giving him the courage and ego to break his terms of service and run away, first to New York, then to Philadelphia.

Franklin found work almost immediately in Philadelphia as a journeyman printer, first for the printer Andrew Bradford , then for the printer Mr. Keimer . His brother-in-law, Robert Holmes convinced him to go back to Boston and ask his father’s blessing. He did, received it, and returned to Philadelphia with his friend John Collins , a drunk who drove Franklin into debt before moving to the West Indies. Governor Keith of Pennsylvania promised to help set Franklin up with a new printing house, and sent him to England to buy the things he needed. Franklin went, but Governor Keith failed to keep his promise. Franklin worked for printers in London to better learn his trade and earn enough money for passage back to America.

After about eighteen months, a friend Franklin made on the passage to England, Mr. Denham , offered to take Franklin on as a clerk for his merchant business. Franklin agreed and moved with Denham back to Philadelphia, but Denham soon died. Franklin returned to work for Mr. Keimer after Denham’s death, and, once he saw that Keimer planned to steal his knowledge and cease to employ him, he made an agreement with one of Keimer’s other workers, Hugh Meredith , to go into business together. The two soon opened their own printing house and Franklin, after eventually buying Meredith out of his partnership, went on to be a very successful printer and public official, founding many important civic institutions, such as the colonies’ first lending library, the academy that went on to become the university of Pennsylvania, and the first company of firemen. Along the way he describes mistakes he made, which he calls errata and believes he was able to partially correct later by living rightly.

In Part Two of his book, Franklin presents letters from friends urging him to complete the rest of his history, then he presents one of his key methods for self-improvement, The Art of Virtue —a thirteen week self-improvement cycle in which Franklin exercised thirteen virtues, focusing on one per week. He also presents his daily schedule.

Part Three resumes the narrative of Part One and includes accounts of Franklin’s military service during the French and Indian War as well as a brief account of some of his scientific experiments and publications on electricity. Franklin also uses Part Three to elaborate upon his civic works, including an explanation of how he got Philadelphia to pave and then light its streets. There is little transition between Parts Three and Four.

In Part Four, Franklin describes a diplomatic mission he undertook in London in order to argue on behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly against the tax-free status of Pennsylvania’s proprietary governors . The mission was a partial success, and the Autobiography concludes, though it is unfinished.

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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for Benjamin Franklin’s unfinished record of his own life, written from 1771 to 1790; however, Franklin himself appears to have called the work his Memoirs. Although it had a tortuous publication history after Franklin’s death, this work emerged from the young American nation to become one of the most famous and influential examples of autobiography ever written.

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Benjamin Franklin: Lover of Liberty and Learning

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• First Online: 22 August 2024
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• Patrick J. Wolf 2  

Benjamin Franklin epitomized what it meant to be an American. Throughout his life before, during, and immediately after the American Revolution, Franklin achieved great fame and success in the fields of printing, invention, public commentary, politics, and science. His educational philosophy and moral teachings focused on self-improvement through individual initiative, virtuous living, and community service. Though largely self-taught, Franklin established institutions for the formal education of future generations. He advocated for universal access to education, including for females, and personally arranged for the education of one of his African American slaves. Benjamin Franklin established the political philosophy of pragmatism, whereby an action is deemed moral if it produces a positive result. He espoused a vision of positive liberty, holding that all persons should be free to live virtuous and purposeful lives. Benjamin Franklin did as much as anyone, except perhaps George Washington, to secure freedom for his countrymen. A well-known historian calls him “The First American” (Brands, The first American: The life and times of Benjamin Franklin. Doubleday, 2000).

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Kidd, T. S. (2017). Benjamin Franklin: The religious life of a founding father . Yale University Press.

Library of Congress. (n.d.). Benjamin Franklin: In his own words . Public exhibition. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/franklin/index.html . Accessed 27 June 2022.

Machiavelli, N. (1998). The prince: Second edition. Translated and with an introduction by Harvey C. Mansfield . University of Chicago Press.

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Platt, S. (Ed.). (1989). Respectfully quoted: A dictionary of quotations . Library of Congress.

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Schiff, S. (2006). The great improvisation: Franklin, France and the birth of America . Holt Publishing.

Taylor, C. M. (1985). What’s wrong with negative liberty? Philosophy and the human sciences: Philosophical papers, 2, 211–229 . Cambridge University Press.

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Wecter, D. (1959). Introduction to Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography and selected writings . Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston.

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Further Reading

Library of Congress. (n.d.). Benjamin Franklin: In his own words . Public exhibition. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/franklin/index.html

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Wolf, P.J. (2024). Benjamin Franklin: Lover of Liberty and Learning. In: Geier, B.A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Thinkers. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25134-4_40

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