The Autobiography and Other Writings

Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) was born in Boston. At twelve, he was apprenticed to his half-brother James as a printer. James published the New England Courant, where Franklin’s first articles, “The Dogood Papers,” appeared before he was seventeen.

In 1723, Franklin moved to Philadelphia. Befriended by William Keith, the Governor of Pennsylvania, he was offered help to start a business. They traveled to England, where Franklin hoped to purchase printing equipment. However, Keith deserted him, and Franklin again turned to printing. His privately printed “A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain” (1725) introduced him to London’s leading Deists and intellectuals.

He returned to Philadelphia a year later. By 1730, he was appointed public printer for Pennsylvania. In 1731, he established the first circulation library in the United States and, in 1743-44, founded the American Philosophical Society. His most successful publication was Poor Richard’s Almanack, which saw numerous editions and was translated into many languages.

For the next thirty-five years, Franklin dedicated himself to politics and diplomacy, serving in the Continental Congress, signing the Declaration of Independence, and acting as Minister to France. Upon his return in 1785, he was elected President of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Committed to individual rights, he published papers advocating for the abolition of slavery. He died in Philadelphia.

L. Jesse Lemisch is Professor Emeritus of History at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York. His notable works include The American Revolution Seen from the Bottom Up.

Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute, has served as chairman of CNN and managing editor of Time. He is the author of Steve Jobs; Einstein: His Life and Universe; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life; and Kissinger: A Biography. He is also the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He lives in Washington, DC.

Carla Mulford has been teaching early American literature and culture and Native American studies at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, since 1986. As the Founding President of the Society of Early Americanists, she has published books on Franklin’s associates and contemporaries, including John Leacock, Annis Stockon, William Hill Brown, and Hannah Webster Foster. She also co-compiled two collections: American Women Prose Writers to 1820, a biographical dictionary, and Early American Writings, an anthology of readings. Mulford has published several essays on Benjamin Franklin and is currently working on two book-length studies: Benjamin Franklin and the Arts of Science and Benjamin Franklin and the Ends of Empire.

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