"The best and most beautiful edition [of the Autobiography]."
--J. H. Plumb, New York Review of Books
Yale University Press Web Site, April, 2003
Summary
The authoritative edition of Franklin's autobiography; now with a new introduction by eminent Franklin scholar
Edmund S. Morgan
Translated into a dozen languages, printed in hundreds of editions, and read by millions of people, Franklin's
autobiography has had an influence perhaps unequaled by any other book by an American writer. Written ostensibly
as a letter to his son William, the autobiography offers Franklin's reflections on philosophy and religion, politics,
war, education, material success, and the status of women. This edition of the autobiography, prepared by the editors
of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, is drawn with scrupulous care from the original manuscript in Franklin's handwriting
now in the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery. The introduction by Leonard W. Labaree places the autobiography
in literary and historical contexts. In a new foreword, Edmund S. Morgan writes about Franklin's dual allegiance
as an American and a subject of an English king--and his emergence as a leader of the American Revolution. This
edition also includes biographical notes, a chronology of Franklin's life, and an updated bibliography.
