The autobiography benjamin franklin part 1

Similarly, his establishment of a subscription library through the Junto club furthers his aims of making knowledge accessible to the general public, creating more opportunities for autodidacticism and self-improvement in the civilian population. These initiatives show Franklin in active attempts to help form a society of free-thinking, knowledgeable, and engaged citizens.

In seeking to establish sites for discussion and debate, and in his love of books, Franklin also highlights The Role of Enlightenment Values in shaping his formative years. The young Franklin, like many philosophers and followers of the Enlightenment, soon learns to regard rigid religious dogmatism with skepticism, preferring instead a more abstract and rationality-based approach to questions of faith.

Deism was a form of religious thought that was very much in vogue among Enlightenment philosophers, as it was a loose belief system that claimed there was a benevolent higher power that had created the universe, but it usually rejected the idea of a god who intervened directly in human affairs. Thus, in aligning himself with Deism, the young Franklin is also declaring his interest in, and willingness to embrace, Enlightenment modes of thought.

View Collection. Common Reads: Freshman Year Reading. The Best of "Best Book" Lists. Study Guide. Benjamin Franklin. Download PDF. Access Full Guide. Book Brief. Part 1 Analysis Franklin opens his autobiography by depicting the act of writing his life story as a means of preserving his memories for others and for posterity. Unlock all 38 pages of this Study Guide.

Unlock Full Library. Related Titles By Benjamin Franklin. Plot Summary. Poor Richard's Almanack. The Articles of Confederation. The Way To Wealth. American Revolution. Books on U. Coming-of-Age Journeys. If Franklin can make a good start towards saving and show he's serious about the business, his father will help him out when he turns twenty-one.

His brother's friend Vernon entrusts Franklin with the task of picking up some money that he's owed once Franklin gets to Pennsylvania. On the voyage to New York, Franklin narrowly escapes falling in with some women who are not all they seem and is warned against it by a friendly Quaker woman; he later finds out that they're thieves who tried to rob the ship's captain.

In New York, Franklin meets up with Collins. They pick up where they left off in their friendship, which is partially based on scholarship and intellectual conversation, but Franklin is kind of annoyed Collins is turning out to be a drunk, and one who's lost a lot of money gambling. Franklin and Collins are on the way back to Philadelphia when Franklin picks up the money that's owed to Vernon.

But Collins doesn't pull his own weight: he keeps drinking and borrowing money from Franklin, and he can't sober up long enough to get a job. Collins needs so much money that they use some of Vernon's, to Franklin's dismay. One night, when they're out on a boat with some other guys, Collins is so drunk he refuses to row. He and Franklin start arguing, and Franklin throws him overboard.

Their friendship doesn't really recover from this. Collins gets a job as a tutor in Barbados, and leaves, but he never pays back the money he owes Franklin. Franklin regrets spending some of Vernon's money, but he doesn't suffer too much from it. Vernon won't come to collect for a few years. Even though his father won't lend him money for the business, the governor offers to do it.

He tells Franklin to make a list of everything he needs — Franklin will need to special order some inventory from England — and says he can pay him back later. Franklin doesn't realize that he governor makes a lot of promises he doesn't keep, so he thinks it's awesome when the governor offers to send him to England to select items for his printing shop in person.

At this point, Franklin also decides to start eating fish again, rationalizing his decision by the fact that fish eat other fish, so people might as well also eat fish. Meanwhile, Franklin keeps working for Keimer without mentioning the governor's plan to set him up in his own business. They have a pleasant relationship and challenge each other to set up a new "Sect," in which people will keep the seventh-day Sabbath, grow full beards, and not eat animal food.

This idea only lasts about three months. Franklin begins courting Deborah Read, but they don't make any serious commitments because they're both so young. They all like to the autobiography benjamin franklin part 1 literature, especially poetry, and talk about it. James Ralph wanted to be a poet, but, Franklin tells us, he'll become a good prose writer.

The others will die young. James Ralph decides to go with Franklin on his governor-sponsored trip to England. While Franklin is supposed to pick up several letters of credit and recommendation from the governor to take with him on his voyage, the governor keeps putting him off, and Franklin has to sail without them. Franklin leaves for England, believing that the governor will arrange for these letters to be sent to him when he arrives.

When the ship docks at New Castle before crossing the Atlantic, Colonel French brings some letters on board that Franklin believes are from the governor. The captain won't let him open them until they land in England, though. Also in New Castle, the lawyer Andrew Hamilton and his son James, who were supposed to be sailing to England, suddenly disembark so they can work on a case.

On the voyage, Franklin makes friends with Mr. Denham, a Quaker. Upon their arrival in England, Franklin can't find any letters addressed to him. He takes some that seem to be in the governor's handwriting to a creditor, but they turn out to be written by someone else, William Riddlesden, and are no good. Franklin turns to Mr. Denham, who tells him the truth about the governor's character: he can't be trusted and that he probably never meant to write Franklin any letters.

Instead, Mr. Denham tells Franklin, he needs to find some work in England. Franklin figures out that the letters from Riddlesden were part of a plot to discredit Andrew Hamilton, who's a friend of Mr. By telling Mr. Denham about this, Franklin becomes his lifelong friend. James Ralph and Franklin set up housing in London and begin looking for work.

Ralph has a hard time finding a job, but Franklin gets lucky with the famed Palmer's Printing-House, where he works for about a year. During this time, he's always lending Ralph money. The men go to a lot of plays and don't manage to save any money. Ralph forgets about his wife and child, while Franklin doesn't think much about his girlfriend, Deborah.

While working at Palmer's, Franklin writes A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Painwhich he later regrets doing, even though it helps him meet different people in London. Since he's living next door to a bookseller named Wilcox, Franklin gets to borrow books from him, which may have given him ideas for starting a library.

Henry Pemberton. Ralph falls in love with a milliner and moves in with her, but he has to move to the country to work when they run out of money. While he's in the country, he uses Franklin's name as his own. Because the milliner has run out of money, she relies more and more on Franklin, who takes this as an invitation to come on to her. She turns him down and tells Ralph, who decides that, based on this, he no longer has to pay Franklin the money he owed him.

Franklin regrets losing Ralph as a friend, but is glad that he can start saving money on his own, and begins working at a larger printing house called Watts'. While working at Watts', he's amazed at how the other printers drink strong beer to make themselves "strong," even though Franklin clearly explains to them why that's irrational.

The autobiography benjamin franklin part 1

Although at first Franklin is reluctant to contribute to a drinking pool with his new colleagues, he relents after they begin teasing him. In turn, he teaches them to eat cheaper and healthier breakfasts. Franklin changes lodging to live in Duke Street, which is nearer to his new job. Here, he keeps his new landlady, a widow, company.

The landlady enjoys his company so much she charges him very little rent for the remainder of his time in London. Franklin also has an interesting encounter with a maiden lady who lives in the building and teaches him about Catholicism. At his new job, Franklin makes friends with a guy named Wygate, who is better educated due to his wealthy background.

Franklin teaches him how to swim. Wygate and Franklin become close, and Wygate asks Franklin to travel with him throughout Europe. When Franklin tells Mr. Denham about the plan, though, Denham tells him it's time to start planning to return to Philadelphia. Franklin briefly reveals Denham's honorable past: Denham had been a businessman in Bristol who had debts with many people.

When he couldn't keep them, he moved to America to make his fortune. He came back to England — on the the autobiography benjamin franklin part 1 ship as Franklin — and paid back every single one of his creditors. Franklin is very impressed by this history. Based on what he knows of the man, Franklin agrees to get out of the printing business and go with Denham back to Philadelphia, as his clerk.

Right before their ship leaves for Philadelphia, Franklin is given a meeting with Sir William Wygate, who wants Franklin to teach his sons how to swim. Franklin decides to pass on this offer and return to America, although he thinks he would make a lot of money if he stayed to start a "Swimming School. On the voyage, he works on a Plan for how to behave in life in his Journal today, we can only read the "Preamble" and the "Outline".

Franklin says it's amazing how well he sticks to it throughout his life. Back in Philadelphia, many things have changed. Major Patrick Gordon has replaced Governor Keith in his governmental position; when Franklin sees Keith in the street, they don't even talk to each other. This French translation was then retranslated into English in two London publications ofand one of the London editions served as a basis for a retranslation into French in in an edition which also included a fragment of Part Two.

Franklin did not include Part Four because he had previously traded away the original hand-written holograph of the Autobiography for a copy that contained only the first three parts. Furthermore, he felt free to make unauthoritative stylistic revisions to his grandfather's autobiography, and on occasion followed the translated and retranslated versions mentioned above rather than Ben Franklin's original text.

Franklin's text was the standard version of the Autobiography for half a century, until John Bigelow purchased the original manuscript in France and in published the most reliable text that had yet appeared, including the first English publication of Part Four. InJ. Zall produced The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: A Genetic Text, attempting to show all revisions and cancellations in the holograph manuscript.

This, the most accurate edition of all so far published, served as a basis for Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography: A Norton Critical Edition and for the text of this autobiography printed in the Library of America's edition of Franklin's Writings. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin also became the first full-length audiobook in history, which was voiced by actor Michael Rye and released in In Frank Woodworth Pine's introduction to the edition by Henry Holt and Company, Pine wrote that Franklin's Autobiography provided the "most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men" with Franklin as the greatest exemplar of the " self-made man ".

Franklin is a good type of our American manhood. Although not the wealthiest or the most powerful, he is undoubtedly, in the versatility of his genius and achievements, the greatest of our self-made men. The simple yet graphic story in the Autobiography of his steady rise from humble boyhood in a tallow-chandler shop, by industry, economy, and perseverance in self-improvement, to eminence, is the most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men.

It is in itself a wonderful illustration of the results possible to be attained in a land of unequaled opportunity by following Franklin's maxims. Franklin's Autobiography has received widespread praise, both for its historical value as a record of an important early American and for its literary style. It is often considered the first American book to be taken seriously by Europeans as literature.

So much so that Mark Twain wrote an essay humorously castigating Franklin for having "brought affliction to millions of boys since, whose fathers had read Franklin's pernicious biography". Lawrence wrote a notable invective in against the "middle-sized, sturdy, snuff-coloured Doctor Franklin," finding fault with Franklin's attempt at crafting precepts of virtue and perfecting himself.

Many other readers have found the work's tone conceited, with its frequent references to the universal esteem Franklin claims to enjoy in virtually all times and places throughout his life. Franklin's repeated, highly specific references to his own pursuit of money has put off many readers. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation. Imitate Jesus and Socrates. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools.

Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. Summary [ edit ]. Part One [ edit ]. Part Two [ edit ]. Part Three [ edit ]. Part Four [ edit ]. Authorship and publication history [ edit ]. Further information: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. Reactions to the work [ edit ]. Literary criticisms [ edit ].

Manuscripts and editions to [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Illustrated by E. Boyd Smith. Henry Holt and Company via Gutenberg Press. Lemay, J. Leo; Zall, Paul M. Benjamin Franklin's autobiography : an authoritative text, backgrounds, criticism. New York: Norton. ISBN Founder of the Day. Retrieved