BFBenjamin Franklin
325 collected words
Benjamin Franklin
Life dates: 1706 AD — 1790 AD
Printer, writer, experimenter and diplomat whose retrospective account of learning and habits sits beside concise practical maxims. Read the memoir and anthology selections as different kinds of writing.
Life and writing
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) began in printing and developed interests in experimentation and public affairs. His work included publishing Poor Richard’s Almanack and serving as a diplomat in France during the American Revolution. This range matters when reading a short attributed sentence: a practical maxim, a personal recollection and a public argument serve different purposes.
The linked Autobiography recounts learning and practical undertakings in a retrospective voice. In its continuation begun at Passy in 1784, Franklin describes a project of repeated self-examination, interruptions and difficulty with Order. Read the reported improvements alongside those limits. The selected anthology maxims below carry a Poor Richard’s Almanac reference; linking the memoir does not claim that these selections occur in it.
Reading this voice
Begin with the memoir’s account of changing a habit and notice how experience complicates the proposed method. Compare a maxim’s compact advice with that longer account rather than expecting either to guarantee success. Bartlett supplies a Poor Richard’s Almanac reference for the selected sayings; that historical citation is not independent manuscript authentication, and the linked Autobiography is a separate reading edition. The archive’s approximate 1748 coordinate is a lifetime midpoint, not the composition date of those sayings.
Subjects to explore
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