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The Radical Enlightenments of Benjamin Franklin

Douglas Anderson

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A fresh look at the intellectual roots of one of the most engaging and multifaceted of America's founders.

Benjamin Franklin, writes Douglas Anderson in his preface, is "no one's contemporary... Blending elements of the fifteenth-century spiritual discipline of Thomas à Kempis with the journalistic energy of Daniel Defoe, the urbane reason of Lord Shaftesbury with the scientific initiative of Thomas Edison, Franklin places exceptional demands on the historical imagination of his readers—demands that are inevitably slighted by writers who emphasize only one set of interests or one facet of a...

A fresh look at the intellectual roots of one of the most engaging and multifaceted of America's founders.

Benjamin Franklin, writes Douglas Anderson in his preface, is "no one's contemporary... Blending elements of the fifteenth-century spiritual discipline of Thomas à Kempis with the journalistic energy of Daniel Defoe, the urbane reason of Lord Shaftesbury with the scientific initiative of Thomas Edison, Franklin places exceptional demands on the historical imagination of his readers—demands that are inevitably slighted by writers who emphasize only one set of interests or one facet of a complex temperament."

In The Radical Enlightenments of Benjamin Franklin Anderson takes a fresh look at the intellectual roots of one of the most engaging and multifaceted of America's founders. Anderson begins by tracing the evolution of young Franklin's theology of works between the letters of Silence Dogood (1722) and his impassioned defense of the heterodox Irish clergyman Samuel Hemphill in 1735. He places the twenty-five-year production of Poor Richard's Almanac in the context of early eighteenth-century moral and educational psychology. He examines the broad intellectual continuities uniting Franklin's 1726 journal of his return voyage to Philadelphia with successive editions of his Experiments and Observations on Electricity, first published in 1751. And he offers a careful examination of Franklin's seminal, and controversial, 1751 essay "Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind."

The Radical Enlightenments of Benjamin Franklin brings us a much fuller understanding of Franklin's intellectual and literary roots and his later influence among common readers.

Reviews

Reviews

Those interested in the history of reading, early America, intellectual history, and Franklin himself would enjoy and profit from this engaging book.

This very helpful volume provides answers for those seeking information about the details in the life and actions of this brilliant individual.

Learned, wise, and gracefully written. Anderson thoughtfully addresses the complexity of Franklin's rhetorical strategy. And of course in another way the book is a history of Franklin's reading and moral and intellectual development, as well as a study of the transatlantic book trade and cultural transmission of ideas. It is all so richly suggestive it is hard to know what to single out.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
288
ISBN
9780801867392
Author Bio
Douglas Anderson
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Douglas Anderson

Douglas Anderson is the Sterling-Goodman Professor of English at the University of Georgia and the author of several books, including The Radical Enlightenments of Benjamin Franklin, also published by Johns Hopkins.