The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Part I

Benjamin Franklin tells the story of his life here, as he himself says, for the benefit of his posterity. His autobiography is his longest work, and yet it is only a fragment. It is comprised of four parts written years apart. This production features the first part, composed in 1771. The work's publication history is a storied one, but eventually in 1868, one John Bigelow made available the standard edition of the work, correcting errors and foreign insertions from previous versions, thus producing the first English edition to contain all four sections. Bigelow then republished the work with additional content in three volumes in 1875, 1905, and 1910.