Primary source
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Written by Benjamin Franklin · 1791 · grounds Benjamin Franklin
Overview
Franklin's own account, begun 1771, published posthumously. The 13 Virtues, the Junto, his approach to self-education and reinvention all come from here.
A full write-up of this book has not been published yet.
Watch the series
8 episodes drawn from this book, about 14m 39s in total. Each one opens on the problem rather than on the summary.
- 01Three Puffy RollsI arrived in Philadelphia at seventeen with a Dutch dollar and a shilling in copper, wearing the dirtiest clothes I owned, because my good ones were coming round by sea. I was hungry. I went into a baker's and asked for three-penny worth of anything he had.1m 50s
- 02How I Ate Rice and Bought BooksAt sixteen I read a book by a man named Tryon recommending a vegetable diet, and I determined to go into it. Everyone around me found this irritating and I was frequently chid for my singularity. But I had not taken it up for my health, and not for my conscience either.1m 55s
- 03Call It an ErratumI was a printer by trade, and printers have a particular word for the mistakes that survive into a finished book. We call them errata. When I came to write the account of my own life, I deliberately used that same shop word for the things I had done wrong.1m 44s
- 04Write the Rules, Not the Guest ListIn 1727 I gathered most of my ingenious acquaintance into a club for mutual improvement. We called it the Junto and we met on Friday evenings. It ran in one form or another for forty years, and very nearly everything I built in Philadelphia began in that room.1m 44s
- 05Fifty Subscribers at Forty ShillingsThere was no good bookseller in Philadelphia and books came dear from England. I wanted to read a great deal more than I could afford to own, and so did every man in the Junto. The obvious answer was to get rich enough to buy books. I did something else instead.1m 47s
- 06Put Yourself Out of SightWhen I first went round proposing the library, my applications were often refused, and I began to notice the reason. People do not resist a good project nearly so much as they resist the man who appears to want the credit for it. So I took myself out of the proposal.1m 50s
- 07I Stopped Saying CertainlyI was a fierce arguer as a young man and tolerably good at it. I won a great many disputes and persuaded almost nobody. Around the time I began the project of my own improvement I gave up the habit of speaking with certainty, and I never took it up again.1m 52s
- 08Thirteen VirtuesYou want to become a better person. Most people wish for it, and stop at the wishing. I tried to engineer it. At twenty years of age, with little money and less schooling, I conceived a bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. Not a sermon. A system.1m 57s
Skills drawn from this book
Installable Claude Code skills grounded in this text. Each one teaches a framework the book actually argues for.