[Americana] Franklin, Benjamin. Memoires de la vie privee de Benjamin Franklin...

Paris: Chez Buisson, 1791. Two parts in one volume. First edition. 8vo. (ii), vi, 156, 363 (i.e. 207) pp. Full contemporary tree calf, rebacked, boards and extremities rubbed, front board bowed; top edge stained dark, other edges trimmed; original marbled endpapers; spotting to text; small stain at center of E8 and K5; in tan cloth fall-down-back box. Ford 383; Grolier, American 100 21; Hart 142; Howes F-323; Sabin 25549; Streeter Sale 4171

First edition--preceding any English printing--of Franklin's canonical autobiography: "The most widely read of all American autobiographies." (Grolier)

"This account is the epitome of Franklin's spirit. In it one sees him as a typical though great example of 18th-century enlightenment, a Yankee Puritan who could agree with Rousseau and Voltaire, and use the language of Defoe and Addison with a genial homely twang." (Hart)

This French translation by the eminent French naturalist Jacques Gibelin is the first appearance of any part of Franklin's autobiography, and covers Franklin's life until 1731, the year he founded the Library Company of Philadelphia. It includes Wilmer's memoirs of Franklin for the period after 1731 in the second part. The work was translated into French from one of the two manuscript copies sent to friends in France for further advice. The first British edition appeared in 1793; the first American edition in 1794, both after French, German, and Swedish editions had already been brought out. The text of the first English edition came from re-translating this first French edition back into English, and not from Franklin's original manuscripts.

This lot is located in Philadelphia.