Customer Reviews
A classic! - By: Michael J. Brett, 25 Oct 2007 
This book is a kind of time machine that puts you straight into the Eighteenth Century. Benjamin Franklin comes over as a fearless & open character, although he is at pains to present himself as a solid & successful businessman in the printing industry. He is very much a man of his time. He concerns himself with God & self-improvement, then after he marries he says how glad he is that he did not catch VD from 'certain low women' beforehand. This, certainly consciously, echoes St Paul's advice on why people should marry.
Within the text are probably whole layers of meaning & alllusions to contemporary events & news culture that are lost on twenty-first century readers. He is certainly working within religious & classical traditions of what an autobiography should be: a conversation with God, carried on in public? or moral examples & advice to the young.
Sometimes he is having a laugh at the autobiographical & literary form itself. For example, it is a commmonplace of Eighteenth Century Literature that you-the writer-had no intention of publishing your book until you were prevailed upon by your friends or the public. Franklin opens the second section of his autobiography with a letter purportedly from a Quaker who says that a life of Franklin would be worth even more than 'alll Plutarch's Lives put together.'This must have raised a laugh in his local club, his 'junto' as he callls it.
However, within the same pages, Franklin describes, clearly with pride, how he swims from Chelsea to Blackfriars in London-which is quite a physical feat, it being two or three miles. He is also at some pains to place much of his financial success on hard work, simplicity & the avoidance of alcohol. These aspects of his life would bequite important for his Low Church readers.
Interestingly-as negative examples- he reports that his London workmates routinely down six pints of strong ale a day, both at home & in the printing office. For his contemporaries, this was unusual from the point of view of the English printers being not just drunkards, but -for his audience- very old fashioned. English people in the sixteenth & seventeenth centuroes -including babies hence the phrases 'tiny tots' 'smalll beer' etc.- drank beer & ale as drinking street pump water was correctly suspected to cause disease.
Here, through the implication that beer drinking is old fashioned & unhealthy, especiallly when compared to American coffee drinking, Franklin is presenting his American readers with the idea that-once again- the Colonies, rather than being a backwater, are more modern that their British counterparts in the Imperial Capital of London.
At the heart of his political thinking seems to be the moral rather than political idea that with moral virtue-and thus God- on your side, you are unstoppable, & sees the United States' future greatness to lie in this.
He takes pains to connect political greatness with the moral quality & education of individual citizens, laying particular emphasis on literacy, & reports with pride how he helped to establish the first lending library in the United States, in Philadelphia.
As a moralist rather than a politician, his republican beliefs do not seem as universal as, say, those of revolutionaries like Robespierre or Tom Paine. For him, the American Republic seems to be uniquely American. At one point he is pleased to report, & say that it is an aspect of his success in life that he has dined with a king, & names him as the King of Denmark. Tom Paine would never have dined with a king, unless it were to poison him!
Now the non-PC bit as bang go his green credentials. The 1726 Journal has Franklin helping to kill & eat dolphins while travelling by sea. He says they are good to eat, & regards them as fish rather than mammals.
A classic! - By: Michael J. Brett, 25 Oct 2007 This book is a kind of time machine that puts you straight into the Eighteenth Century. Benjamin Franklin comes over as a fearless & open character, although he is at pains to present himself as a solid & successful businessman in the printing industry. He is very much a man of his time. He concerns himself with God & self-improvement, then after he marries he says how glad he is that he did not catch VD from 'certain low women' beforehand. This, certainly consciously, echoes St Paul's advice on why people should marry.
Within the text are probably whole layers of meaning & alllusions to contemporary events & news culture that are lost on twenty-first century readers. He is certainly working within religious & classical traditions of what an autobiography should be: a conversation with God, carried on in public? or moral examples & advice to the young.
Sometimes he is having a laugh at the autobiographical & literary form itself. For example, it is a commmonplace of Eighteenth Century Literature that you-the writer-had no intention of publishing your book until you were prevailed upon by your friends or the public. Franklin opens the second section of his autobiography with a letter purportedly from a Quaker who says that a life of Franklin would be worth even more than 'alll Plutarch's Lives put together.'This must have raised a laugh in his local club, his 'junto' as he callls it.
However, within the same pages, Franklin describes, clearly with pride, how he swims from Chelsea to Blackfriars in London-which is quite a physical feat, it being two or three miles. He is also at some pains to place much of his financial success on hard work, simplicity & the avoidance of alcohol. These aspects of his life would bequite important for his Low Church readers.
Interestingly-as negative examples- he reports that his London workmates routinely down six pints of strong ale a day, both at home & in the printing office. For his contemporaries, this was unusual from the point of view of the English printers being not just drunkards, but -for his audience- very old fashioned. English people in the sixteenth & seventeenth centuroes -including babies hence the phrases 'tiny tots' 'smalll beer' etc.- drank beer & ale as drinking street pump water was correctly suspected to cause disease.
Here, through the implication that beer drinking is old fashioned & unhealthy, especiallly when compared to American coffee drinking, Franklin is presenting his American readers with the idea that-once again- the Colonies, rather than being a backwater, are more modern that their British counterparts in the Imperial Capital of London.
At the heart of his political thinking seems to be the moral rather than political idea that with moral virtue-and thus God- on your side, you are unstoppable, & sees the United States' future greatness to lie in this.
He takes pains to connect political greatness with the moral quality & education of individual citizens, laying particular emphasis on literacy, & reports with pride how he helped to establish the first lending library in the United States, in Philadelphia.
As a moralist rather than a politician, his republican beliefs do not seem as universal as, say, those of revolutionaries like Robespierre or Tom Paine. For him, the American Republic seems to be uniquely American. At one point he is pleased to report, & say that it is an aspect of his success in life that he has dined with a king, & names him as the King of Denmark. Tom Paine would never have dined with a king, unless it were to poison him!
Now the non-PC bit as bang go his green credentials. The 1726 Journal has Franklin helping to kill & eat dolphins while travelling by sea. He says they are good to eat, & regards them as fish rather than mammals.
A classic! - By: Michael J. Brett, 25 Oct 2007 This book is a kind of time machine that puts you straight into the Eighteenth Century. Benjamin Franklin comes over as a fearless & open character, although he is at pains to present himself as a solid & successful businessman in the printing industry. He is very much a man of his time. He concerns himself with God & self-improvement, then after he marries he says how glad he is that he did not catch VD from 'certain low women' beforehand. This, certainly consciously, echoes St Paul's advice on why people should marry.
Within the text are probably whole layers of meaning & alllusions to contemporary events & news culture that are lost on twenty-first century readers. He is certainly working within religious & classical traditions of what an autobiography should be: a conversation with God, carried on in public? or moral examples & advice to the young.
Sometimes he is having a laugh at the autobiographical & literary form itself. For example, it is a commmonplace of Eighteenth Century Literature that you-the writer-had no intention of publishing your book until you were prevailed upon by your friends or the public. Franklin opens the second section of his autobiography with a letter purportedly from a Quaker who says that a life of Franklin would be worth even more than 'alll Plutarch's Lives put together.'This must have raised a laugh in his local club, his 'junto' as he callls it.
However, within the same pages, Franklin describes, clearly with pride, how he swims from Chelsea to Blackfriars in London-which is quite a physical feat, it being two or three miles. He is also at some pains to place much of his financial success on hard work, simplicity & the avoidance of alcohol. These aspects of his life would bequite important for his Low Church readers.
Interestingly-as negative examples- he reports that his London workmates routinely down six pints of strong ale a day, both at home & in the printing office. For his contemporaries, this was unusual from the point of view of the English printers being not just drunkards, but -for his audience- very old fashioned. English people in the sixteenth & seventeenth centuroes -including babies hence the phrases 'tiny tots' 'smalll beer' etc.- drank beer & ale as drinking street pump water was correctly suspected to cause disease.
Here, through the implication that beer drinking is old fashioned & unhealthy, especiallly when compared to American coffee drinking, Franklin is presenting his American readers with the idea that-once again- the Colonies, rather than being a backwater, are more modern that their British counterparts in the Imperial Capital of London.
At the heart of his political thinking seems to be the moral rather than political idea that with moral virtue-and thus God- on your side, you are unstoppable, & sees the United States' future greatness to lie in this.
He takes pains to connect political greatness with the moral quality & education of individual citizens, laying particular emphasis on literacy, & reports with pride how he helped to establish the first lending library in the United States, in Philadelphia.
As a moralist rather than a politician, his republican beliefs do not seem as universal as, say, those of revolutionaries like Robespierre or Tom Paine. For him, the American Republic seems to be uniquely American. At one point he is pleased to report, & say that it is an aspect of his success in life that he has dined with a king, & names him as the King of Denmark. Tom Paine would never have dined with a king, unless it were to poison him!
Now the non-PC bit as bang go his green credentials. The 1726 Journal has Franklin helping to kill & eat dolphins while travelling by sea. He says they are good to eat, & regards them as fish rather than mammals.
We can all learn something from this book - By: DAVID-LEONARD WILLIS, 15 Dec 2003 Benjamin Franklin's autobiography is the story of one man's efforts to integrate certain principles & habits - integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty - into his life & to embed them deep within his nature. Franklin was a scientist, philosopher, statesman, inventor, educator, diplomat, politician, humorist & man of letters who led a very full life. He was also a moralist & humanitarian who was happy to be considered unconventional by doing things the way he thought they should be done. His was a life well lived & a model from which we can learn much. In the introduction we are told: "Himself a master of the motives of human conduct, Franklin did not set out to reveal himself in his autobiography. Rather, he intended to tell us (insofar as we, the nation, are the 'posterity' to whom he addressed himself) how life was to be lived, good done, & happiness achieved - how the balll was to be danced."
Franklin did not have an easy life as the tenth son of a candle maker whose education ended at the age of ten. But by hard work & careful planning he was able to retire from business at the age of forty-two & devote his time to science & politics. He was sent to England in 1764 to petition the King to end the proprietary government of the colony. Soon after the Revolution began he was sent to France to negotiate an allliance with Louis XVI. He was a member of the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence. It is difficult to image anyone not coming away richer from reading this book.
