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Author Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790, author.

Title The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin / edited by Peter Conn ; preface by Amy Gutmann
Edition Penn Reading Project ed
Published Philadelphia, PA : PENN/University of Pennsylvania Press, ©2005

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 180 pages)
Contents The power of values / by Amy Gutmann -- Benjamin Franklin and the American imagination / by Peter Conn -- The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin / edited by Nathan G. Goodman -- Benjamin Franklin and the American Enlightenment / by Richard R. Beeman -- Freedom on reason / by Paul Guyer -- An inclination joined with an ability to serve / by Michael Zuckerman -- The key to electricity / by Michael Weisberg -- Proposals relating to the education of youth in Pennsylvania / by Benjamin Franklin -- A chronology of Franklin's life / compiled by Mark Frazier Lloyd
Summary Printer and publisher, author and educator, scientist and inventor, statesman and philanthropist, Benjamin Franklin was the very embodiment of the American type of self-made man. In 1771, at the age of 65, he sat down to write his autobiography, "having emerged from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and bred to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the world, and having gone so far through life with a considerable share of felicity." The result is a classic of American literature. On the eve of the tercentenary of Franklin's birth, the university he founded has selected the Autobiography for the Penn Reading Project. Each year, for the past fifteen years, the University of Pennsylvania has chosen a single work that the entire incoming class, and a large segment of the faculty and staff, read and discuss together. For this occasion the University of Pennsylvania Press will publish a special edition of Franklin's Autobiography, including a new preface by University president Amy Gutmann and an introduction by distinguished scholar Peter Conn. The volume will also include four short essays by noted Penn professors as well as a chronology of Franklin's life and the text of Franklin's Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, a document resulting in the establishment of an institution of higher education that ultimately became the University of Pennsylvania. No area of human endeavor escaped Franklin's keen attentions. His ideas and values, as Amy Gutmann notes in her remarks, have shaped the modern University of Pennsylvania profoundly, "more profoundly than have the founders of any other major university of college in the United States." Franklin believed that he had been born too soon. Readers will recognize that his spirit lives on at Penn today. Essay contributors: Richard R. Beeman, Paul Guyer, Michael Weisberg, and Michael Zuckerman
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 135-142)
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
English
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
Print version record
Subject Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790.
SUBJECT Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790
Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790 fast
Subject Statesmen -- United States -- Biography
Scientists -- United States -- Biography
Inventors -- United States -- Biography
Printers -- United States -- Biography
Education -- Pennsylvania
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- General.
Education
Inventors
Printers
Scientists
Statesmen
Pennsylvania
United States
Genre/Form autobiographies (literary works)
Autobiographies
Biographies
Autobiographies.
Autobiographies.
Form Electronic book
Author Conn, Peter J., editor
ISBN 9780812200119
081220011X
1283210592
9781283210591
9786613210593
6613210595