American printer, writer, diplomat, philosopher, and scientist.
Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston in 1706, the fifteenth child in a family of 17 children. Franklinīs father was a tallow chandler by trade. He came to America from England and was proud of his Protestant ancestors. The Franklin family was quite poor, like most New Englanders of the time. At the age of 10 Benjamin Franklin began to work with his father, but he hated his fatherīs occupation and threatened to run away to sea. A compromise was made and when Benjamin was twelve he was apprenticed to his brother, a printer. Because he loved books and reading, he learned quickly, and he also liked to write and when he was only 15, he started to write contributions to his brotherīs paper (these articles were published anonymously).
After a quarrel with his brother Franklin ran away to Philadelphia. This break was inevitable, for Franklin was proud and independent by nature, and too clever for his brother. At the age of 17, with little money in his pocket but already an expert printer, he proceeded to make his way in the world.
He worked for one printing shop in Philadelphia, later he was sent to England to buy equipment for his own press, but, failing to receive the necessary money, he worked in a London printing house. While abroad he wrote A Disertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain, which was a polemics with one essay he had set up in type.
In 1726 Franklin returned to Philadelphia and four years later had his own press, from which he issued The Pennsylvania Gazette. The Pennsylvania Gazette became a successful paper. Moreover, Franklin created here a number of imaginary characters with whom he engaged in dispute, wrote many essays on matters of contemporary interest, and introduced weather reports into American journalism.
Franklin had an instinct for success. He taught himself French, Spanish, Italian and Latin, yet he was shrewd enough to know that people did not like to do business with merchants who were smarter than them. He dressed plainly and sometimes carried his own paper in a wheelbarrow through Philadelphia streets to assure his customers that he was hardworking and not above doing things for himself.
In 1730 Franklin married and had two children. He was also the father of two illegitimate children.
Franklin was active throughout his whole life. He initiated projects for establishing city police, for paving, cleaning and lighting streets, and for the first public circulating library. He also founded the American Philosophical Society, a city hospital, and an Academy for the Education of Youth, which was the forerunner of the University of Pennsylvania.
At the age of 42 Franklin retired from business and wanted to devote himself to public affairs and his lifelong passion for the natural sciences, especially the phenomena of sound, earthquakes, and electricity.
Science was Franklinīs great passion, the only thing about which he was not ironic. He made many scientific experiments, including his famous kite experiment to show the identity of lightning and electricity. He invented a new kind of clock, the lightning rod and the Franklin stove, which furnished greater heat with a reduced consumption of fuel. He devised means to correct the excessive smoking of chimneys.
After the retirement, however, Franklin did not spend his time in laboratory making experiments only. He devoted himself to public affairs intensively. In 1757 he was sent to England, to attempt to secure better governmental conditions for the colony, and he remained abroad, with brief interruptions, until 1775. In England he protested against the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts. When he returned to Philadelphia in 1775, he was chosen as the representative to the Second Continental Congress, and helped to draft the Declaration of Independence. Then he was appointed Minister to France, where he successfully negotiated a treaty of allegiance and became something of a cult hero. In 1781 he was a member of the American delegation to the Paris peace conference, and he signed the Treaty of Paris, which brought the Revolutionary War to an end.
When Franklin died in 1790, he was one of the most beloved Americans. Twenty thousand people attended his funeral.
Poor Richardīs Almanack (1733-58)
was first published in 1733, under the pen name Richard Saunders.
It continued to be published till 1758. It is the most famous of
American almanacs (almanac = a book which comprises a calendar, a
register of feast days, sometimes it contains agricultural advice
on seasonal activities). Franklin compiled these almanacs and also
wrote contributions to it, usually witty and cynical observations.
Franklin wrote and collected proverbs, mostly for achieving wealth
and preaching hard work and thrift. These proverbs were brought
together in Father Abrahamīs speech, the speech of a wise old man
to the people attending an auction. This speech from the almanac of
1758 have frequently been reprinted as The Way to Wealth.
Autobiography .
Franklin began to write his autobiography in 1771, but he never
finished it. It was published in England, France and Germany, before
the American edition in 1818. In Autobiography you can see Franklin as
a typical though great example of 18th century enlightenment.
Sources:
LAUTER, P. (ed.). The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Volume One.
Lexington: D. C. Heath and Company, 1990.