“THE LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN IS OF IMPORTANCE TO EVERY AMERICAN”: SCARCE 1869 EDITION OF FRANKLIN’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY, THE FIRST PUBLISHED FROM HIS ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT
(FRANKLIN, Benjamin) BIGELOW, John, editor. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1869. Octavo,
First trade edition of Franklin’s autobiography, preceded only by a large paper issue the same year (100 copies)—“this is not only the first appearance of the autobiography from Franklin’s own copy, but also the first publication in English of the four parts, and the first publication of the very important ‘outline’ autobiography. It is therefore the first edition of the autobiography” (Ford, 423), with steel-engraved frontispiece of Franklin, scarce in original gilt-lettered cloth.
Benjamin Franklin worked on sections of his autobiography from 1771-89, but it was not published in a complete and authoritative form until this 1868 edition edited by John Bigelow. “This is not only the first appearance of the autobiography from Franklin’s own copy, but also the first publication in English of the four parts, and the first publication of the very important ‘outline’ autobiography. It is therefore the first edition of the autobiography” (Ford 423). The original manuscript had been left by Franklin to his grandson and literary executor Temple Franklin and found its way to the family of Louis-Guillaume Le Veillard, “where it remained until sold in 1867 to Bigelow, United States Minister to France… When Bigelow came to examine his purchase, he was astonished to find that what people had been reading for years as the authentic Life of Benjamin Franklin by Himself, was only a garbled and incomplete version of the real autobiography. Temple Franklin had taken unwarranted liberties with the original. In 1868, therefore, Bigelow published the standard edition of Franklin’s Autobiography. It corrected errors in the previous editions and was the first English edition to contain the short fourth part, comprising the last few pages of the manuscript, written during the last year of Franklin’s life… The life of Benjamin Franklin is of importance to every American… As far as American literature is concerned, Franklin has no contemporaries” (Berges, Introduction, Autobiography, 88-92). Not long after this work’s publication in 1868, historian Frederick Jackson Turner proclaimed Franklin “the first great American… His life is the story of American common-sense in its highest form” (Isaacson, 481). First trade edition: preceded the same year by a large paper issue of 100 copies. With tissue-guarded steel-engraved frontispiece portrait of Franklin. Howes F323. Sabin 25492.
Despite authoring the constituent parts of his autobiography separately and over the course of multiple decades, Franklin intended his composition to stand as a unified piece of work. According to editors J. A. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall, Franklin began writing part one of the autobiography in July or August 1771, which is also when he most likely authored an outline for the whole work.[3] Over a decade later in 1782, Franklin was prompted by leading Philadelphia merchant Abel James to continue writing the autobiography. In a letter to Franklin that was ultimately included in the autobiography, James wrote of the work:
“If it is not yet continued, I hope thou wilt not delay it, Life is uncertain as the Preacher tells us, and what will the World say if kind, humane and benevolent Ben Franklin should leave his Friends and the World deprived of so pleasing and profitable a Work, a Work which would be useful and entertaining not only to a few, but to millions.”[4]
Franklin subsequently completed Part Two while living in France in 1784. Part Three was authored in 1788–1789 after Franklin returned to the United States, and Part Four was authored by an ailing Franklin in the final stages of his life.[5]
The Autobiography remained unpublished during Franklin's lifetime. In 1791, the first edition appeared, in French rather than English, as Mémoires de la vie privée de Benjamin Franklin, published in Paris. This translation of Part One only was based on a flawed transcript made of Franklin's manuscript before he had revised it. This French translation was then retranslated into English in two London publications of 1793, and one of the London editions served as a basis for a retranslation into French in 1798 in an edition which also included a fragment of Part Two.
The first three parts of the Autobiography were first published together (in English) by Franklin's grandson, William Temple Franklin, in London in 1818, in Volume 1 of Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin. W. T. 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.
W. T. 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 1868 published the most reliable text that had yet appeared, including the first English publication of Part Four. In the 20th century, important editions by Max Ferrand and the staff of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California (Benjamin Franklin's Memoirs: Parallel Text Edition, 1949) and by Leonard W. Labaree (1964, as part of the Yale University Press edition of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin) improved on Bigelow's accuracy. In 1981, J. A. Leo Lemay and P.M. 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.