Preface

The Unfinished Life of Benjamin Franklin

Preface

This book proposes to illuminate the legacy of Benjamin Franklin by substituting his memoir for his life. The reverse is the customary scholarly practice: to sift the memoir for incidents and evidence that can illuminate our current understanding of the Atlantic world in Franklin’s lifetime. No face in American history is more famous than his. Perhaps only Washington and Lincoln are equally recognizable, and equally mythic, figures. Since the bicentennial of the American Revolution, and the tercentennial of Franklin’s birth, no other individual has prompted a similar outpouring of work by biographers, historians, political scientists, economists, and cultural critics—much of it of very high quality and eagerly consumed by a large community of readers who continue to be drawn to the story of Franklin’s interests and achievements, his strengths and weaknesses.

But our collective story of Franklin’s life is not his story. To the extent that I have been able to do so, I have set the historical presence of Benjamin Franklin to one side in order to concentrate on reading the pages of his incomplete memoir, an immersion in words that, I hope, is as rewarding as Franklin’s own experience often proved to be, when as a sixteen-year-old apprentice he ate a simple and hurried lunch in his brother’s Boston printing house and devoted the rest of his midday break to the complex pleasures of reading. From time to time, I have called attention to Franklin’s personal or public circumstances during the course of discussing his book, but I have done so only when those circumstances seemed instrumental to understanding and enjoying Franklin’s prose. These remarks will partly explain the selective nature of the notes that follow these chapters and provide a measure of necessary background for the introduction’s opening sentence.

A NUMBER OF GENEROUS INDIVIDUALS offered their time, advice, and assistance as this book took final form. Olga Tsapina, Norris Foundation Curator of American Historical Manuscripts at The Huntington Library, made the process of securing illustrations from Franklin’s manuscript a pleasure. Paul Hogroian and Bonnie Coles at the Library of Congress directed me to the 1973 printed guide of the library’s Franklin holdings, much of which, including Franklin’s 1775 voyage letter, is widely available on microfilm. The Imaging Services staff of the University of Georgia Library converted selections from the film into digital files. Carla Mulford kept me engaged with Franklin’s work, despite the distractions of other writing interests, and gave a thoughtful assessment of the manuscript that prompted its complete reconsideration.

Robert J. Brugger at the Johns Hopkins University Press steered the book into the hands of Matt McAdam, an exemplary blend of advocate and critic throughout the acquisitions process. Brian MacDonald was both a patient and an exacting copy editor. Juliana McCarthy and Anne Whitmore, along with the rest of the editing and production staffs at the Johns Hopkins University Press, managed my authorial anxieties with tact and intelligence, as they ushered the book into being.

I continue to be grateful to the University of Georgia for its support of my writing through the resources of the Sterling-Goodman Professorship.