The Curious Evolution of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography

8. The next major leap forward in publishing Franklin's work does not occur until 1868. In that year, international statesman John Bigelow purchases the original holograph from France and prints Part Four for the first time. He also makes revisions to Sparks's publications of Parts One to Three, based on the holograph. This work appears in three volumes as The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1868. This is also the first publication of Franklin's Outline of the Autobiography.

9. Thanks to contemporary scholarship we now have a lot more knowledge about the Autobiography. The 18th- and 19th-century printed works have been compared not only to the original holograph and the copy of the Outline, but have been cross-referenced. The three most important critical contemporary scholarly works include Max Farrand, ed., Benjamin Franklin's Memoirs: Parallel Text Edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949); Leonard W. Labaree, et al., The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), the basis for the Norton Critical Edition as well as the Library of America edition; and J. A. Leo Lemay and P.M. Zall, eds., The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: A Genetic Text (Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press, 1981). The end result of this scholarship has been the virtual recreation of Franklin's work in his own words, along with extensive textual notes and analysis of the textual variants found in the various editions.

So, what constitutes the first edition of the work? If we insist on the author's native tongue and completeness, this does not appear until the 20th century critical editions, or at least arguably until 1868. For collectors and booksellers, my advice in learning about this work is to start by studying the contemporary critical editions and work backwards.

An enduring and important work, Franklin's Autobiography will always compellingly bring together the worlds of rare books and literary scholarship.

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The Curious Evolution of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography

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