His friends had urged him to complete his story in order to direct young people in the ways they should go and it was primarily as a moral tract that expurgated versions of the Autobiography were first taught in American schools. But, significantly, the book continues to survive such changes.įor the diminishing numbers interested in obtaining moral instruction through their entertainment - a group including an apparent majority of nineteenth-century readers - Franklin's Autobiography is indeed a prize. Its most admired qualities have changed as fashions, philosophies, and needs have changed. An answer to the riddle of the Autobiography is partially hinted at by the ways in which it has been described, for if it has not been all things to all men, it has at least been remarkable to most men who have read it. Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790, printer, scientist, statesman, wrote an Autobiography that poses a riddle never completely solved: How could such an incomplete, disjointed, inaccurate, mangled manuscript be so perennially popular? Translated into dozens of languages and reprinted in hundreds of editions, it continues to be one of the most successful books of all time, even though Franklin himself is sometimes viewed with suspicion by the haters of industry and frugality.
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