Franklin on FranklinPaul M. Zall Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography ends in 1758, some thirty years before he died. Those three decades included some of the statesman's greatest triumphs, yet instead of including them in his memoir, Franklin spent the years continually revising his original text. Paul Zall has created a new autobiographical account of Franklin's entire life. By returning to a newly recovered early draft of the Autobiography, he strips away later layers of moralizing to reveal the story as Franklin first wrote it: how a poor boy from Boston used words and hard work to become America's first world-class citizen. To cover Franklin's career as a diplomat and as the only signatory of all three key documents of the American Revolution, Zall interweaves autobiographical comments from Franklin's personal letters and private journals. Franklin emerges as different from the common perception of him as a crafty "Man of Reason." His raw words reveal the bitter infighting among both British and American politicians and his personal struggle with his son's choice of the opposite side in the fight for the future of two countries. Without the veneer of second thoughts, his lifelong struggle to control his temper carries greater poignancy, as do his later years spent nursing his wounded pride. Susceptible to both fallibility and frustration, the honest Franklin depicted in his own words nevertheless remains an uncommon common man, perhaps even more so than previously thought. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 16
... intended to clarify the context, are no substitute for the exhaustive annotation of the Norton Critical Edition or in the magisterial edition of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin in process of publication since 1959 or in the detailed ...
... intended to give all his Shorthand Volumes of Sermons if I would learn his Character [orthography]. I continu'd however at the Grammar School only one Year, tho' in that time I had risen gradually from the Middle of the Class of that ...
... intended for a new House near the Marsh, and which would very well suit our Purpose. Accordingly in the Evening when the Workmen were gone, I assembled a Number of my Playfellows, and working with them diligently like so many Emmets ...
... intended to proceed. I saw immediately that one of them was a crafty old Sophister, and the other a mere Novice. Bradford left me with Keimer, who was greatly surpriz'd when I told him who the old Man was. Keimer's Printing House I ...
... intended to obtain Goods to sell on Commission. But I found afterwards, that thro'some Discontent with his Wife's Friends, he purposed to leave her on their Hands, & never return again. Having taken leave of my Friends, & interchang'd ...
Contents
1 | |
11 | |
26 | |
31 | |
36 | |
41 | |
49 | |
25 December 172421 July 1726 | 59 |
1749 | 156 |
17481753 | 160 |
17431753 | 170 |
1754 | 178 |
1756 | 194 |
17561757 | 205 |
17571762 | 218 |
17571765 | 226 |
23 July11 October 1726 | 69 |
Future 17261727 | 79 |
May 1728September 1730 | 89 |
17291730 | 95 |
17311732 | 103 |
17311754 | 120 |
17361739 | 130 |
17391740 | 138 |
1740s | 146 |
17661770 | 232 |
17701774 | 240 |
17741775 | 250 |
17751785 | 259 |
17851790 | 270 |
Notes | 289 |
Selected Bibliography | 299 |
Index | 303 |