8vo (216 x 127 mm). Half-title. (Half-title affixed to front free endpaper and sprung, small ink stain to A8v.) Contemporary calf-backed marbled boards, red morocco lettering-piece gilt (crude repairs along joints, corners and ends worn, recased). Provenance: indecipherable early ownership signature; Frank Stephen Dolley (bookplate).

FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH of Franklin's memoirs, first published in an unauthorized French translation in 1791, and then translated back into English for this edition. Though not Franklin's words exactly, “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” (Hart 142). Grolier American 21 (“The most widely read of all American autobiographies...it holds the essence of the American way of life”); Howes F323; Sabin 25573.