The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin Including His Private As Well As His Official Correspondence, And Numerous Letters and Documents Now For The First Time Printed With Many Others Not Included In Any Former Collection.

FRANKLIN, Benjamin.

Item Number: 117044

New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1887-1888.

The Letter-Press edition of Benjamin Franklin’s complete works. Octavo, ten volumes bound in contemporary half morocco over marbled boards with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in three compartments within raised gilt bands, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, tissue-guarded engraved frontispiece portrait of Franklin to Vol. I. One of 600 numbered copies, this is number 372. Additional clipped frontispiece portrait of Franklin adhered to the pastedown of Vol. I. in addition to a typed copy of a 1745 letter written by him tipped in at rear. Illustrated plates tipped in to Vol. I, II, III and IX. In very good condition. Gift inscription. Rare in a contemporary binding.

Benjamin Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity, initially as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies. As the first United States Ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation. Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of historian Henry Steele Commager, "In a Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become."