Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1889 edition. Excerpt: ... morals, beside all the writings published in former collections, his diplomatic correspondence, a variety of literary articles and epistolary correspondence, never before published, with memoirs and anecdotes of his life. Colburn, in London, also published in 1817 Franklin's Private Correspondence, comprising a series of letters written between /jjj and /790, ... from the originals, by his grandson, William Temple Franklin, which in a second edition (1S17) contained a supplement not in the large work. This was only a separate issue of vol. ii. of the Memoirs. This was the condition of affairs when Sparks, having finished his Washington, turned his attention to Franklin. His first venture was to annotate what he called A Collection of familiar letters and miscellaneous papers of Benjamin Franklin, now for the first time published (Boston, 1833; and beginning Familiar Letters, etc., London, 1833). It was between 1836 and 1840 that he published at Boston, in ten volumes, what remained for fifty years the standard edition of Franklin's works: The Works of Benjamin Franklin, with notes and a life of the author:2 In the first volume Sparks gave the autobiography, following the text of W. T. Franklin, to which he added a continuation to Franklin's death.8 1 There were reissues of this edition in Philadelphia, 1S34, 1840, 1S58. Vols. v. and vi. of Duane's edition were translated badly in French by Charles Main, and published at Paris, 1817, as Correspondence inJdite et secrete du Docteur B. Franklin. Cf. Ford's Bibliog. of Franklin, with some parts of which that gentleman has favored me in advance of publication. a Reissued, Buston, 1844-56; Chicago, 1882. The plates were at one time in the hands of Henry Stevens, who intended to issue a new..
