The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Cover of the first English edition of 1793.
Author	Benjamin Franklin
Original title	Mémoires de la vie privée de Benjamin Franklin
Language	American English
Genre	Autobiography
Publisher	Buisson, Paris (French edition) J. Parson's, London (First English reprint)
Publication date	1791
Publication place	United States
Published in English	1793

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771 to 1790; however, Franklin appears to have called the work his Memoirs. Although it had a tortuous publication history after Franklin's death, this work has become one of the most famous and influential examples of an autobiography ever written.

Franklin's account of his life is divided into four parts, reflecting the different periods during which he wrote them. There are actual breaks between the first three parts of the narrative, but Part Three's narrative continues into Part Four without an authorial break. The work ends with events in his life from the year 1758 when he was 52 (Franklin would die in 1790 at age 84).

In the "Introduction" of the 1916 publication of the Autobiography, editor F. W. Pine wrote that Franklin's biography provided the "most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men" with Franklin as the greatest exemplar.^[1]