Existing comment:
Mémoires de la vie privée de Benjamin Franklin, first French edition
Paris: Chez Buisson, 1791
Collections of The Bakken Library and Museum
This French translation of the first section of Franklin's memoirs, focusing on only the initial 25 years of his life, is the first published edition of Franklin's Autobiography. Following came several other versions, based on the French. The true first edition of the complete Autobiography (consisting of four parts) was finally printed in 1868, when John Bigelow found and published Franklin's original manuscript. |