Benjamin Franklin

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Benjamin Franklin

• (1706-1790)

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Benjamin Franklin

• Born in Boston on Jan. 17, 1706
• The son of a soap maker, Franklin early rebelled
  against the narrowness of the life offered him in
  Boston.

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Benjamin Franklin

• Raised as Puritan, but rejected his parents
  religion in favor of Deism
• Arrived at both his religious and social
  philosophies by his own experimentation and
  intelligence.
• He only had approx. 1 yr. of formal schooling at
  the Boston Grammar School.
• He eventually acquired learning from his own
  experience
• vast readings in American, British, and West
  European books newspapers

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Benjamin Franklin

• Apprenticed to his brother James
• Assisted in writing and printing of the NEW
  ENGLAND COURANT (1721-1723).
• The brothers wrote satires of the Massachusetts
  authorities, and Franklin contributed essays
  (anonymously) that appeared under the pseudonym,
  SILENCE DOGOOD.

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Benjamin Franklin

• At age 17, after quarreling w/his brother, he
  secretly ran off to Philadelphia with only the
  clothes on his back.
• He explains fully in his autobiography the
  reasons for his departure.
• Partly he felt restricted by the censorship of
  the press
• Partly because he had felt that his brother had
  exploited him in the role of apprentice-publisher.
  

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Benjamin Franklin

• Worked for a year in a printing house in
  Philadelphia.
• With assistance by Gov. Keith, went to England
  for about 3 yrs. to seek his fortune.
• Printing jobs there.
• Returned in 1726 to Philadelphia and soon
  prospered as a printer.
• He bought reformed a newspaper, The
  PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE (1730),
• started his own stationer's shop
• rose to public prominence as the designated
  public printer for the colony

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Benjamin Franklin

• He married Deborah Read in 1730. (d. 1774)
• Devoted, illiterate, and a good housewife, she
  bore him two children
• Tolerant of her husband's infidelities
• reared his illegitimate son William Franklin

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Benjamin Franklin

• 1731 started the Philadelphia Library, the
  first American circulating library.
• 1732, he created POOR RICHARD'S ALMANAC.
• It is perhaps the most sustained of his literary
  productions. Its proverbs illustrate his
  understanding that Puritan virtues had immense
  utilitarian value.
• A Deist and Natural Rights philosopher believing
  in the perfectibility of man, he felt obligated
  to show others how they, too, could rise from
  rags to riches by consciously leading a frugal,
  industrious life.

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Benjamin Franklin

• As his wealth increased, he earned a deserved
  reputation as a promoter of benevolent projects
  in Philly.
• his civic accomplishments led to his involvement
  in local politics.
• By 1748, at age 42, he felt wealthy enough to
  retire from his business as a printer to devote
  himself to science and politics.
• His most important discoveries were in the new
  field of electricity.
• His experiments led to the discovery that
  lightning is a form of electricity and to a
  theory of electricity which forms the basis of
  our modern understanding of it.
• His scientific achievements in this area brought
  him international acclaim.

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Benjamin Franklin

• Soon, his growing involvement in politics
  overshadowed his interest in science.
• At the Albany Congress of 1754, he advanced his
  prophetic plan of union which embodied the
  federal principle.
• He always asserted that adoption of his plan,
  rejected by the colonies and Parliament, would
  have averted the American Revolution.
• He became a leading member of the Pennsylvania
  Assembly, and in 1757 he was sent to England to
  present the Assembly's grievances against the
  Proprietors of Pennsylvania.

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Benjamin Franklin

• In England, he gradually found himself caught up
  in the battle against Parliament's attempts to
  legislate for the colonies.
• He helped to repeal the Stamp Act as an
  impractical measure
• Many of his finest satires and political essays
  date from this period.
• Left England in 1775 and returned to find America
  at war.
• As a member of the Second Continental Congress
  and later as America's minister to France, he
  gained his greatest fame.

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Benjamin Franklin

• His plan for the union was the single strongest
  influence on the Articles of the Confederation
  and his 1776 Constitution for Pennsylvania
  afforded practical examples of the operation of
  the unicameral legislature, an executive of weak
  powers, and a denial of compulsive force by
  central authority - all soon to be features of
  the new federal govt.

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Benjamin Franklin

• 1778 Went to France helped win recognition of
  the United States' independence and a treaty of
  alliance with France.
• Helped John Adams John Jay formed a Peace
  Commission W/Great Britain.
• .

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Benjamin Franklin

• Began his Autobiography in 1771 at Twyford,
  England. Completed his memoirs up to the year
  1757.
• to guide his son William
• He died in Philadelphia on April 17, 1790

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Benjamin Franklin

• His style that evolved was a result of his
  journalistic work of necessity clear and
  forceful, plain and brief.
• His practical-minded readers found it free of
  nonsense but full of moralizing.
• In his essay ON LITERARY STYLE three requirements
  for good writing that it be "smooth, clear and
  short"

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Benjamin Franklin

• His career as a printer in Philly encompassed
  three large journalistic projects during a span
  of about 12 years
• The PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE (a newspaper)
• POOR RICHARD'S ALMANACK
• GENERAL MAGAZINE AND HISTORICAL CHRONICLE

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Benjamin Franklin

• For volume and rapidity of production few writers
  have matched Franklin. An estimate is that the
  number of documents written by him numbers in the
  vicinity of 20,000.

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Benjamin Franklin

• Much of his writing is satirical fun, usually in
  the form of essays or letters to the editor.
• He tried to make himself morally perfect by
  self-discipline. He failed to do so, but he did
  carry out another kind of self-transformation.
  By hard work and cleverness, he changed himself
  from the poorly educated son of a candle and soap
  maker into a world-famous scientist, diplomat,
  philosopher, and writer.

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Benjamin Franklin

• The contrast between Franklin's humble beginnings
  and his vast success has made him a symbol of
  America.
• He is perhaps America's least appreciated major
  writer. His achievements in other fields usually
  take precedence over his achievements as an
  essayist, satirist, political controversialist,
  letter writer, and autobiographer.

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Benjamin Franklins Autobiography

• Each of the 3 parts of Franklin's AUTOBIOGRAPHY
  reflects the time and circumstances of its
  composition.
• When Franklin wrote the first portion while
  visiting the Shipleys in Hampshire, he liked
  England. He was enjoying a welcome period of
  relief from his official duties, and he assumed
  the role of a retired country gentlemen giving a
  private acct. of his unusual and adventurous
  history.

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Benjamin Franklin

• The piece began to take the shape of a short
  picturesque novel. It has the young Benjamin
  Franklin as a hero.
• themes are
• his ambition to be in business for himself
• his education in writing
• his inner struggle over religious questions
• his uneven progress toward marriage

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Benjamin Franklin

• the older Franklin publicize his youth and also
  demonstrate to himself a continuity between the
  retired gentleman who is writing and the boy and
  young man who was already receiving attention
  from men like himself.
• There is a distinct juxtaposition of youth and
  age in this part of the Autobiography, symbolized
  by the device of writing it as a letter to his
  son William.
• One is led to believe that William was about the
  age of the young Benjamin, somewhere in his teens
  or twenties
• in 1771, he was about 40 yrs. old and Gov. of NJ

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Benjamin Franklin

• First edition published in France in 1791
• The first English translation, "The Private Life
  of the Late Benjamin Franklin, LL.D. Originally
  Written By Himself, And Now Translated From The
  French," was published in London in 1793.

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