“Of the men whom the world currently terms Self-Made … our American Franklin stands highest” - Horace Greeley

Benjamin Franklin is sixty-eight years old when this second volume of his life’s story begins...

Through his incredible transformation from a runaway apprentice into one of the founding fathers of America, it is possible that Benjamin Franklin lived more in his life than any other man. And yet, his journey to becoming a founding father was not without its turmoil - it meant cutting ties with his son, leaving his country, and setting in motion the events that would unravel the French Aristocracy.

Chronicling his deterioration in health and the loss of his wife as he moved from his sixties into his seventies and eighties, this account demonstrates how Franklin nonetheless persisted in wringing every last drop out of his life. From being beloved in Versailles and a victorious peace-broker, to his position as three-time president of the Assembly of the State of Pennsylvania and crafting the American Constitution, it upholds Walter Isaacson’s view of Franklin as ‘the most accomplished American of his age’.

This second and final volume of James Parton’s Franklin biography is transcendent. A bright and compelling work that combines Franklin’s intensely personal letters to his wife and sister with quotes from some of the most famous texts in American history, The Life of Benjamin Franklin is a must read.

James Parton (1822-1891) moved with his family from England to the United States when he was five years old. After studying in New York and becoming a schoolmaster there and in Philadelphia, Parton started his writing career. He focused on the lives of the great men and women of his day, such as Thomas Jefferson, Horace Greeley, Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin. Imbuing traditional biographies with stylistic qualities borrowed from fiction, his novel approach quickly earned him a spot as the most popular biographer of his day. Harriet Beecher Stowe thanked him "for the pleasure you have given me in biographical works which you have had the faculty of making more interesting than romance—(let me trust it is not by making them in part works of imagination)."