• 31 • “THE MOST WIDELY REPRINTED OF FRANKLIN’S WRITINGS”: EXCEEDINGLY RARE 1758 EDITION OF FRANKLIN’S POOR RICHARD’S ALMANACK 31FRANKLIN, Benjamin. Poor Richard Improved: Being an Almanack and Ephemeris of the Motions of the Sun and Moon… For the Year of our Lord 1758. Philadelphia: 1757. 12mo, stitched as issued; 36 unnumbered pages (18 leaves, the final two supplied from a later edition). $16,000 Rare first edition of Franklin’s famous almanac for the year 1758, the last in the Poor Richard series to be printed by him, and the first to incorporate the famous aphorisms of prior issues into a preface entitled “The Way to Wealth”—“the most widely reprinted of Franklin’s writings.” Illustrated with a woodcut showing the anatomy of a man’s body surrounded by symbols of the Zodiac, along with 14 other woodcuts. “This is the twenty-sixth and last almanac in this series which Franklin prepared himself. Appropriately, the contents of this almanac make it the best known of all, for it is the direct source of the most widely reprinted of all Franklin’s writings. In it Franklin created a new persona, ‘a plain clean old Man, with white Locks,’ called Father Abraham. At a public ‘vendue’ the assembled crowd called on him for comment on ‘the Times’ and for advice on how to meet the ‘heavy Taxes’ now in force. Father Abraham’s speech in response consists of the selection and careful arrangement in a connected discourse of approximately one hundred of the aphorisms and maxims contained in the earlier Poor Richard almanacs. The quotations selected are, with few exceptions, those inculcating hard work, diligence, careful management of one’s affairs, prudence, and thrift. This concentration upon a series of related themes and the wide circulation which has been given to this piece in the course of two hundred years have had a profound effect upon the Franklin legend and the public conception of his sense of values.” (Founders Online). “Since the introduction of the first printing press to Massachusetts, the almanac had been the quintessential product of the colonial printer. […] The almanac came to epitomize the American condition. […] Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack is the best known of the colonial almanacs and was distinguished by its sayings and maxims” (The Book in America, 29). Franklin wrote and published his almanac for 25 years. “In 1732 I published my Almanac under the name of Richard Saunders; it was continued by me about twenty-five years, and commonly called Poor Richard’s Almanac. I endeavored to make it both entertaining and useful, and it accordingly came to be in such demand, that I reaped considerable profit from it” (Franklin). “This almanac is the 26th in the Poor Richard series and the final one known to be of Franklin’s composing” (Miller 657). One leaf has a closed tear, and two leaves have a minor hole. Text only very lightly browned, with some marginal wear, chiefly to corners, at times affecting border and text; some spotting to title page. Despite its flaws (including the loss of several lines of “The Way to Wealth”) and fragility, a truly scarce example of an iconic American work which rarely appears on the market. An exceedingly scarce work, copies of which rarely appear on the market, particularly of so early a date and printed by Franklin.
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