Franklin’s Autobiography is the only enduring best-seller written in America before the nineteenth century, as well as the most popular autobiography ever written.
As such it deserves to be offered to twentieth-century readers in the most accurate form possible, and so it is, in this Norton Critical Edition, the first text to be edited directly from the manuscripts, rather than perpetuating the errors of previous editions.
The text is fully annotated, and the reading is assisted by helpful footnotes, biographical sketches, and two maps.
In "Backgrounds", the editors collect Franklin’s most important reflections on the Autobiography’s purpose, some anecdotes, and a number of Franklin’s statements on wealth, the art of virtue, and perfection. Materials in "Criticism" range from contemporary opinions—which reveal that readers were divided then as they are now about the art of the Autobiography—to essays written in the twentieth century.
Nineteenth-century opinions include those of John Keats, Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, and William Dean Howells, among others.
The twentieth-century materials include D. H. Lawrence’s celebrated essay, an excerpt from Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and the perspectives of such recent critics as Charles L. Sanford, Robert Freeman Sayre, John William Ward, and David Devin.
【目录】
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Note on the Text
The Text of the Autobiography
The Autobiography
Textual Notes
Frankin’s Journey from Boston to Philadelphia, 1723
The Outline of the Autobiography
Biographical Notes
Backgrounds
Excerpts from Franklin’s Letters Mentioning the Autobiography
To Mathew Carey, August 10, 1786
To the Duke de La Rochefoucauld, October 22, 1788
To Benjamin Vaughan, October 24, 1788
To William Vaughan, December 9, 1788
To Benjamin Vaughan, June 3, 1789
To Benjamin Vaughan, November 2, 1789
To M. Le Veillard, November 13, 1789
"Authentic Memoir of Dr. Franklin"
Anecdotes Recorded by John Jay
[Robert Hunter Morris]
[Andrew Hamilton]
[Writing for the New Jersey Assembly]
[Quaker Attitude toward Warfare]
Excerpts from Frankin’s Writings On Wealth, The Art of Virtue, and Perfect
Wealth
From Poor Richard, March, 1736
To Cadwallader Colden, Philadelphia, September 29, 1748
To Abiah Franklin, Philadelphia, April 12, 1750
To William Strahan, Philadelphia, June 2, 1750
To Peter Collinson, Philadelphia, November 5, 1756
[Benjamin Rush on Franklin]
To Jane Mecom, London, December 30, 1770
To Thomas Cushing, london, June 10, 1771
To David Hartley Passy, France, February 2, 1780
Benjamin Vaughan to Lord Shelburne, Dover, November 24, 1782
To Robert Morris, Passy, France, December 25, 1783
To Benjamin Webb, Passy, France, April 22, 1784
To Benjamin Vaughan, Passy, France, July 26, 1784
[Private Property Is a Creature of Society, November, 1789]
The Art of Virtue
[Poor Richard on Self-Improvement, 1749]
To Lord Kames, May 3, 1760
To Joseph Priestley, September 19, 1772
Perfection
Franklin’s Epitaph, 1728
[Franklin’s Junto Query on Human Perfection, 1732]
[An Early Version of the Art of Virtue, 1758]
[On Perfection in Human Institutions, 1770]
[On Religious Tests for Citizenship, 1780]
Criticism
CONTEMPORARY OPINIONS
David Hume, David Hume to Franklin, Edinburgh, May 10, 1762
Mather Byles, Mather Byles to Franklin, Boston, late 1765
Franklin in the Cockpit, The Pennsylvania Gazette Report, 1774
House of Lords, February 1, 1775, William Pitt, Lord Chatham vs. Jogn Montague, Lord Sandwich, on Franklin
Edmund Burke, Edmund Burke to Count Patrick D’Arcy, October 5, 1775
Peter Oliver, Excerpt from Origins · Progress of the American Rebellion
Richard Price, Richard Price to Franklin, May 1790
Anonymous, Excerpt from The Bee, February 27, 1793
John Adams, John Adams on Franklin, May 15, 1811
NINETEENTH-CENTURY OPINIONS
Joseph Dennie, From The Port Folio, 1801
Franci, Lord Jeffrey, From the Edinburgh Review, 1806
Charles Brockden Brown, From Literary Magazine, 1806
John Foster, From The Eclectic Review, 1818
John Keats, To George and Georgiana Keats, October 14-31, 1818
Edgar Allan Poe, The Business Man
Leigh Hunt, From Hunt’s Autobiography
Herman Melville, From Israel Potter
Anonymous, From The Nation, 1868
Mark Twain, The Late Benjamin Franklin
Frederick Jackson Turner, From The Dial, 1887
William Dean Howells, From "Editor’s Study," April, 1888
- From "Editor’s Study," July, 1888
- From "Editor’s Study," January, 1890
- From "Editor’s Easy Chair," October, 1905
TWENTIETH-CENTURY OPINIONS
Max Weber, Excerpt from The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
D.H. Lawrence, Benjamin Franklin
W. Somerset Maugham, [The Classic Books of America]
Charles L. Sanford, An American Pilgrim’s Progress
Robert Freeman Sayre, The Worldly Franklin and the Provincial Critics
John William Ward, Who Was Benjamin Franklin?
David Levin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: The Puritan Experimenter in Life and Art
J.A. Leo Lemay, Franklin’s Autobiography and the American Dream
Bibliography
Key Editions of Franklin's Autobiography
Abbreviations and Bibliography for the Annotations and the Biographical Notes
A Selective, Annotated Bibliography of Twentieth-Century Criticism
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