📚 Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Himself)

Infobox

Title	Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Author	Benjamin Franklin
Genre	autobiography
Publisher	Unknown
Pub Date	1791
Date Read	Aug 2023
Rating	4.1 / 5

Intro

Out of things to read on my Kindle app, I figured I’d give this book a try. I had downloaded it many years prior, and it had remained untouched. Who doesn’t know Benjamin Franklin? Well, I was pleasantly surprised and delighted to get to know this man in such an intimate way. In his own words, no less, with a 200 year gap between us. I took so many notes while reading his book, and got so inspired to learn more about this life and the milieu in which the man worked, that I bought Walter Isaacson’s biography of the man as soon as I finished his autobiography. Reading the autobiography reminded me of the utility of keeping notes on the major moments throughout one’s life. Granted, Franklin wrote his autobiography from memory. But seeing as how my own memory is quite poor, I think I would benefit tremendously in keeping records of the key events of my own life such that I could one day reflect and write about my own life as one long story. I marveled at the fact that the man, at once so multifaceted and charming, lived through such an influential and momentous time through the U.S.’s early years. And one may imagine how history would have differed had it not been for him.

My rating is

Rating

Entertainment

4/5. There’s something about the way he describes his experiences that makes it humorous. His writing isn’t deliberately funny or anything, but I was amused reading the account of a man that is so well known, but in fact, whom I knew very little about in detail. The book passes through timespans during which major history was made for the nascent United States, and as a man of his time, it was enlightening to see him come up as a common man. His family was not a wealthy one, who brought with them family riches from England. To me, the tales from his boyhood and teens seemed almost like adventures, and he embodied the values of the traditional American: industriousness, frugality, service, integrity. Benjamin Franklin was a self-made man in every sense of the word, and I think is an early representative of the many to come in the history of the country. The book ignited a curiosity to learn more about the early history of the United States, and I purchased Walter Isaacson’s biography of the man as soon as I finished the autobiography.

Resonance

4/5. The impression I got of Benjamin Franklin the man upon reading the book, is that of an industrious, frugal, and humble man who doesn’t take himself too seriously and is dedicated to making use of his own immense talents and connections in the service of his fellow man. A couple of things that resonated with and inspired me:

1. Using writing to influence, persuade, inform, and educate
2. Formalization of thought and intent into writing and committing to live by them
   1. Wrote down a list of virtues he strove to work towards, and recorded how he measured up
   2. Though he admitted his failure in upholding them, he confesses that writing them down and working on them was better than not doing it at all
3. Tolerance of different religions, stating that “the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man”
   1. In regards to the establishment of the academy - which was to become the University of Pennsylvania - Franklin states that “…care was taken in the nomination of trustees, in whom the building and ground was to be vested, that a predominancy should not be given to any sect, lest in time that predominancy might be a means of appropriating the whole to the use of such sect, contrary to the original intention”
4. Promotion of frugality and industry as “the means of procuring wealth, and thereby securing virtue”
   1. People think of money as bad or evil, but Franklin states that wealth leads to securing virtue.
5. Creation and membership of the Junto, a club for mutual edification by means of producing pieces of writing that were debated and critiqued amongst the members
6. Use of anonymity to achieve gains
   1. Writing under a pseudonym while an apprentice at his brother James’s print shop to get his own writing published
   2. Writing the famous Almanack under an assumed name
   3. Proposal of the city watch in the Junto, then letting his proposed ideas gain currency and support organically in the subsidiaries of the Junto instead of him putting forth his proposal in his own name
7. Establishment of partnership businesses for his former employees
   1. Didn’t result in quarrels among the proprietors as he made sure to put in explicit writing the terms of the partnership
8. Humility and knowing when to step up and step aside
   1. Following the creation of the Philadelphia regiment, Franklin let someone else become the leader despite popular calls on him to assume the role, also serving as a common soldier at one time
   2. Refusal of patent rendering sole vendorship rights. Franklin refused Gov. Thomas’s offer of sole vendorship patent after invention of the open stove on the grounds that as much as we enjoy the benefits of others’ inventions, that inventors [such as himself] ought to be glad of an opportunity to serve others and that “this we should do freely and generously”
   3. Franklin shuns the limelight in introducing the proposal for the academy (what was to become the University of Pennsylvania), stating its provenance to be “of some publick-spirited gentlemen”
9. Recording of personal errata - misdeeds, wrongdoing to others - and corrections thereof
   1. Franklin kept a record of what he considered to be wrongdoings towards others and how he corrected these errata.

Originality

5/5. It’s his life told in his own words. Every life is original, and it’s his own words used to tell the story of it. The fact that the span of his life coincided with the most momentous events of the nascent nation made it doubly fascinating.

Now I don’t know whether the other Founding Fathers have written autobiographies or memoirs of this sort, but the very fact that he wrote down the story of his life in his own voice for posterity in such a pivotal period of history in itself makes for very original reading. Everyone who has gone through the U.S. school system and/or anyone with an interest in the founding of the U.S. knows him, and yet to be able to follow the trajectory of his life guided by his own voice is a rare gift. I would also add a caveat lector here as the book must have some factual errors owing to the temporal distance between the occurrence and then subsequent recording of the event, drawn from his memory and notes. All the more reason to read Isaacson’s definitive biography to get more context of the autobiography.

Coherence

3.5/5. The book is split into different chapters of his life. His childhood, teenage, and early adult years form the bulk of the book, and the chapters get shorter towards the mid-to-latter years of his life. Which is, understandable as he increasingly took on bigger, more influential roles over the years that that he most likely grew too busy.

Recommendability

4/5. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is curious about hearing the story of a poor boy go from a struggling apprentice to the highest positions of wealth and influence during a time of immense upheaval and change in the history of the United States. It’s a no-brainer for history buffs and lovers of (auto)biographies. The casual reader can also benefit from the humor that comes through his writing, and the edification of his reflections on personal errata, efforts to serve his fellow man, and his humble, self-effacing nature.