Written in epistolary form and drawn from actual events, Brown sThe Power of Sympathy(1789) and Foster sThe Coquette(1797) were two of the earliest novels published in the United States. Both novels reflect the eighteenth-century preoccupation with the role of women as safekeepers of the young country s morality."

Comprehensive and accessible, this Companion addresses several well-known themes in the study of Franklin and his writings, while also showing Franklin in conversation with his British and European counterparts in science, philosophy, and social theory. Specially commissioned chapters, written by scholars well-known in their respective fields, examine Franklin's writings and his life with a new sophistication, placing Franklin in his cultural milieu while revealing the complexities of his intellectual, literary, social, and political views. Individual chapters take up several traditional...

A comprehensive and insightful compilation of Benjamin Franklin's The Autobiography and other essays which offers an in-depth look into the life of America's most fascinating Founding Father.
Benjamin Franklin was a true Renaissance man: writer, publisher, scientist, inventor, diplomat, and politician. During his long life, he offered advice on attaining wealth, organized public institutions, contributed to the birth of a nation, and negotiated with foreign powers to ensure his country's survival.
Through the words of the elder statesman himself, The Autobiography...

This volume attempts to throw fresh light on two areas of Benjamin Franklin's intellectual world, namely: his self-fashioning and his political thought. It is an odd thing that for all of Franklin's voluminous writings--a fantastically well-documented correspondence over many years, scientific treatises that made his name amongst the brightest minds of Europe, newspaper articles, satires, and of course his signature on the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution--and yet scholars debate how to get at his political thought, indeed, if he had any political philosophy at all. It...

Early American Writings brings together a wide range of writings from the era of colonization of the Americas through the period of confederation in North America and the formation of the new United States of America. The anthology includes materials representing cultures indigenous to the Americas as well as writings by British, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, Swedish, German, African, and African American peoples in America during the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. With more than 170 writers included, the collection represents the works known and admired in the...