5/9/2023 0 Comments Franklin the autobiography![]() ![]() ![]() 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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