(left image)īenjamin Franklin, Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin(London: Printed for G.
It consisted of only the first of the four parts that Franklin wrote.īenjamin Franklin, The Private Life of the late Benjamin Franklin… Originally Written by Himself, and Now Translated from the French (London: Printed for J. Stuber’s third-person account of Benjamin Franklin’s life was based on an unrevised manuscript of only the first of the four parts of Franklin’s memoirs.īenjamin Franklin, Mémoires de la Vie Privée de Benjamin Franklin Écrits par Lui-même, et Adressés à son Fils (Paris: Chez Buisson, 1791).įranklin’s “autobiography” was first published in Paris in 1791 in a French translation. Henry Stuber, “History of the Life and Character of Benjamin Franklin,” The Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine (Philadelphia, May 1790). For more than 60 years after Franklin’s death, this manuscript was in France.
Facsimile.įranklin folded his paper vertically and wrote in only one column, leaving the other column free for later revisions and additions. This text, incomplete and significantly different from what Franklin wrote, was the basis of innumerable cheap American and British editions throughout the nineteenth century, even after Franklin’s grandson finally brought out his own supposedly “authoritative” edition in 1818.Ī page from Franklin’s own manuscript of his Letter to his Son (i.e., the “Autobiography”). That first part went only up to his 25th year, so all Franklin’s early publishers thought of his memoir as a fragment that told a small part of the story, and they added to it a variety of letters and documents to complete the “Life.” Moreover, that unrevised copy of part one was first published in 1791 in Paris in a French translation, and the first English editions of 1793 were translations of the French translation. The word was not even coined until long after Franklin died, but more significantly, he wrote his autobiography at four different times in his life, and for many years only the first part circulated in print, in a version based on an unauthorized and unrevised copy of his manuscript. There was no such thing as Franklin’s “autobiography” until well into the nineteenth century.
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