Introduction

The Autobiography began as a letter to his son, written when Franklin was sixty-five; he worked at it on and off for nearly twenty years, bringing the story only up to his fifty-first year, and never finished it. He tells how the son of a Boston tradesman came penniless to Philadelphia and by industry, frugality and constant self-education became a successful printer, a respected citizen and a scientist famous throughout the world. Its most famous part is his 'project of arriving at moral perfection': he listed thirteen virtues, temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquillity, chastity and humility, drew up a chart, worked on one each week and examined his faults every evening. The first classic autobiography in American literature, it has inspired countless self-made young people for more than two centuries.