BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS

Skillful arrangement of the autobiographical writings, including not only the writings so identified by Franklin himself, divided into four sections, but letters, memoirs, notes -- and some 50 hitherto uncollected pieces and some never before printed. The arrangement carries the reader chronologically through the great man's life and varied interests, so that he is virtually telling his own story in his own words written at the time of the happenings reported; the letters show the man as a visible, audible human being. The brief editorial notes throughout at no point inject Carl Van Dorn, but simply place the material, the source, the transitional facts for clarity. The extraordinary vitality of the subject makes reading Franklin's writings unfailingly absorbing.