This is the twenty-sixth and last almanac in this series which Franklin prepared himself; thereafter David Hall assumed the responsibility.5 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, even including the autobiography. Richard Saunders’ prefatory address to the “Courteous Reader,” which in previous almanacs usually occupies about one page, is in this year expanded to fill not only the usual second page of the pamphlet but also all the available space on the right-hand pages devoted to the twelve months and all but two lines of an additional page after December. 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.6

Father Abraham’s speech in response to this call comprises the chief substance of this extended preface. It 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. If Franklin had used any one of these aphorisms as a text for Father Abraham’s homily (which he did not do) he might well have selected one from April 1744: “Industry, Perseverance, and Frugality, make Fortune yield.”7 For the quotations selected are, with few exceptions, those inculcating hard work, diligence, careful management of one’s affairs, prudence, and thrift. Omitting all the other commentary on man and society which the almanacs so extensively provide, Father Abraham focuses attention exclusively upon the prudential wisdom which, in fact, occupies only a relatively small proportion of “the little Spaces that occur’d between the Remarkable Days in the Calendar.”

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. In his own lifetime its homely wisdom contributed heavily to his personal popularity, especially in France during the American Revolution; in more recent years it has been responsible for elevating him to the status of patron saint of American savings banks and for the agreement to make “National Thrift Week” coincide with the week in January which includes his birthday. On the other hand, it has led such a hostile critic as D.H. Lawrence to complain that, having been brought up on “those Poor Richard tags,” it had taken him “many years and countless smarts to get out of that barbed wire moral enclosure that Poor Richard rigged up.”8 How little the maxims that Franklin chose to have Father Abraham repeat actually reflect the sum total of the observations on life and behavior he had inserted in the almanacs is apparent from an examination of the entire series as already printed in these volumes; how little they indicate all the values by which he himself lived is revealed in countless other passages in this edition.9

The quotations are drawn with considerable impartiality from all the preceding almanacs. No almanac is ignored and only three are represented just once each. On the other hand, the Poor Richards for 1737, 1743, and 1754, supply six aphorisms apiece for Father Abraham’s speech, and the almanac for 1746 provides eight.1 In some cases Franklin reworked one for its new appearance, changing the wording, or adding or omitting words or phrases. A few apparent quotations from Poor Richard are also included, which, in fact, are not found in any of the earlier almanacs but which, because of their appearance here, have come to be regarded as part of the Poor Richard canon.

This preface is dated July 7, 1757, indicating that Franklin wrote it —or at least finished it—while at sea on his way to England. He may have begun the writing while in New York or Woodbridge during the long wait before setting sail, and probably all the material for the almanac except the preface was in Hall’s hands before Franklin’s ship had weighed anchor at Sandy Hook. The Gazette announced, September 15, that Poor Richard improved for 1758 was “now in the Press and speedily will be published,” and advertised it as “just published” in the issue of October 6. Franklin probably sent back the copy for the preface by the Earl of Leicester packet, Captain Morris, which reached New York on September 10 after a fast passage of thirty-three days from Falmouth.2

The bibliographical history of this famous preface is long and complicated. It has never been worked out in full, and perhaps never will be. The present editors have pursued extended inquiry only to the end of the eighteenth century and their investigations still leave several questions unanswered; some appear to be unanswerable.

The preface to Poor Richard improved for 1758 has appeared in print hundreds of times in English or in translation, in full or abridged. It has also served as the source for a number of lesser pieces incorporating its central ideas and preachments or imitating its method, but bearing very little direct relation to its actual words. In its original form, or only moderately condensed or modified, it has been variously titled “Preliminary Address prefixed to the Pennsylvania Almanack for 1758,” “Father Abraham’s Speech …,” “The Way to Wealth,” “La Science du Bonhomme Richard,” or either of the last two as translated into various European languages. In its most familiar and somewhat abbreviated form, the one which has made its contents most widely known to readers of English, it has usually been called “The Way to Wealth.” A very short homily based on its ideas, but not representing at all the original text, has become widely known as “The Art of Making Money Plenty in Every Man’s Pocket.” In one or another version the preface has appeared as a separate pamphlet, a chapbook, or a broadside, in editions of Franklin’s collected works, in anthologies of literature or of didactic pieces, in school readers, and in other almanacs. Translations survive in at least fifteen foreign languages.3

The present editors have located copies or found listings of 145 reprintings before the end of the eighteenth century.4 English-language reprints include 36 in the colonies or the United States, 51 in England, 7 in Scotland, and 6 in Ireland. Eighteenth-century translations include 28 into French (including one each printed in London, Brussels, and Utrecht and four in Lausanne), 11 into Italian, 3 into German, and one each into Dutch, Gaelic, and Swedish. These 144 eighteenth-century reprintings of a single piece by one American writer are evidence of the extraordinary appeal of Father Abraham’s discourse. It is not surprising that the Franklin legend came very early to include the idea that he was the apostle of industry and thrift.5

The first known reprinting of the preface was in Boston, issued by Franklin’s nephew Benjamin Mecom. The Boston News-Letter for March 30, 1758, carried his advertisement that “Father Abraham’s Speech” was “This Day Published.” This is a 24-page pamphlet, with a very long title which begins: Father Abraham’s Speech To a great Number of People, at a Vendue of Merchant Goods; Introduced to The Publick By Poor Richard, (A famous Pennsylvanian Conjurer and Almanack-Maker) In Answer to the Following Questions.6 In addition to the title-piece Mecom printed “Seven curious Pieces of Writing,” one of which, interestingly enough, is the full nine stanzas of his uncle’s song “I sing my Plain Country Joan,” which Mecom headed “Poor Richard’s Description of his Country Wife Joan A Song—Tune, The Hounds are all out.”7 Mecom reprinted the speech in a 16-page pamphlet in 1760, probably in the autumn, this time without appending any of the “curious Pieces” he had included before.8

Timothy Green of New London, Conn., reprinted the speech from Mecom’s 1758 issue in an undated 24-page pamphlet, probably soon after it appeared in Boston.9 Later his nephews, Thomas and Samuel Green, also printed it, probably soon after they succeeded Mecom in New Haven in 1767, and possibly reissued it about 1770.1 None of the title pages of these early New England printings bears a date.

The first English reprinting—published only a day or two after Mecom’s 1758 Boston issue—was in London in The Grand Magazine of Universal Intelligence for March 1758.2 It carried the heading “Curious preliminary Address prefixed to the Pennsylvania Almanac, entitled Poor Richard improved: For the Year 1758. Printed at Philadelphia.” Except for some minor changes, such as in capitalization, spelling, and punctuation, the text is the same as in the original almanac. Almost at once The London Chronicle reprinted the piece in the issue of April 1–4, using the same title (except for the omission of the word “Curious”) and the same text, and citing the Grand Magazine as its source. No further printing in England has been located until 1770 when Mrs. Ann (Fisher) Slack included it in a new edition of her anthology The Pleasing Instructor or Entertaining Moralist. She called it “Preliminary Address prefixed to the Pennsylvania Almanac for 1758: On Oeconomy and Frugality.”3 Again the full original text appears, although Mrs. Slack somewhat primly changed such conversational expressions as “won’t” and “you’d” to the more literary “will not” and “you would.” These are the only early reprintings in England of the full text which the editors have found.

Thus far the various reprintings, both in England and the colonies, followed exactly, or virtually so, the full text as contained in Poor Richard improved for 1758. But an important alteration took place in 1771. The Gentleman’s Magazine for February of that year printed what it called “Substance of a Preliminary Address prefixed to an old Pennsylvania Almanack, intitled Poor Richard Improved.4 The text was shortened by about one-sixth. All the first two paragraphs after the opening sentence were omitted as were a few of Father Abraham’s own comments at various points. The editor dropped out nine of the quoted aphorisms and eliminated a great many of the repetitions of “as Poor Richard says” and parallel expressions. As Mrs. Slack had done the year before, he expanded many of the conversational contractions such as “won’t,” “you’d,” and “they’ll.” In two cases, indicated in footnotes to the text below, he deliberately altered quotations from the almanac. The whole effect is to tighten as well as to shorten the piece and to reduce somewhat the personal involvement both of Father Abraham and of Richard Saunders himself. Whether “Sylvanus Urban,” the pseudonymous editor of The Gentleman’s Magazine, or someone else was responsible for these changes is not known. Their nature suggests strongly that Franklin was not himself responsible.

This version seems never to have been exactly reprinted in England, and only once in America.5 It served, however, as the prototype, though not the exclusive textual source, for many of the hundreds of reprintings that have appeared since 1771, most of them under the title “The Way to Wealth,” or one of its foreign-language equivalents. The normal “Way to Wealth” version repeats all the major omissions and changes of the magazine text, but has numerous minor differences from it. Whoever prepared this new form appears to have had both the earlier full preface and The Gentleman’s Magazine’s shortened version before him. Most notably, he restored some, though not all, of the uses of “as Poor Richard says,” and, apparently liking the expression, added it or similar words several times when they are not found in the original. The differences from the magazine text are numerous enough to make clear that it was this text which was used in most of the later English-language printings or translations. The new title was obviously suggested by two sentences near the end of Franklin’s “Advice to a young Tradesman” (1748): “In short, the Way to Wealth, if you desire it, is as plain as the Way to Market. It depends chiefly on two Words, Industry and Frugality.”6

No edition in this form and entitled “The Way to Wealth” has been found with an imprint date earlier than 1774, but at least one issue with this title and the corresponding textual differences from the Gentleman’s Magazine’s “Substance of a Preliminary Address” must have appeared at least as early as 1773, for Barbeu Dubourg published his French translation of Franklin’s works in that year and included in it “Le Moyen de s’enricher” drawn immediately from the new English version.7

The strongest candidate for the honor of being the first printed text under the new title is a 16-page pamphlet, the title page of which bears, between two rows of printer’s ornaments, only the words The Way to Wealth, as Clearly Shewn in the Preface of An old Pennsylvania Almanack, intitled Poor Richard Improved. This pamphlet appears in three undated issues which differ from each other in several typographical details.8 Probably all three issues were published in London.9 Two other printings with the same, or nearly the same, full title have a London 1774 imprint date and three more, undated, are believed to have been published in that or the next year. When Benjamin Vaughan compiled his edition of Franklin’s Political, Miscellaneous, and Philosophical Pieces (London, 1779), he included this shortened version of the almanac preface, using the same title as the separate printings just mentioned.1 At the same time Vaughan’s London publisher, J. Johnson of St. Paul’s Church Yard, issued “The Way to Wealth” in a broadside, which was helpfully mentioned in a note at the end of the text in the volume.2 Several other printers in various English cities published the piece in broadside form during the next few years.

During the 1780s and 1790s printings in England, Scotland, and Ireland were too numerous to warrant individual mention here. They appeared as separate pamphlets, in magazines, and in anthologies of various sorts.3 Some of these printings used the title beginning “Preliminary Address” essentially as it had appeared in The London Chronicle in 1758 and included the full text reprinted there from The Grand Magazine. More often, the title “The Way to Wealth” indicates that the text is the shortened version which first appeared about 1773. That the publishers were indebted to the Vaughan 1779 edition of Franklin’s works was sometimes shown by their including in the title Franklin’s name and some phrase such as “From his Political Works.” Title pages which identify publications in twenty cities and towns in the British Isles attest to the widespread interest in this work.

“The Way to Wealth” as a title, and the shortened form which the title indicates, seem not to have appeared in America until 1780 when John Carter, a Providence printer who had served his apprenticeship with Franklin and Hall, used it in the different editions of his New England Almanack for 1781.4 Other printings, in newspapers, magazines, or almanacs, as pamphlets or broadsides, or in anthologies, followed in America during the next two decades.5 Title-page imprints represent eighteen cities and towns, scattered from Maine to Pennsylvania; only the printers in the southern colonies and states appear as a group to have been indifferent to this highly popular composition.

Jacques Barbeu Dubourg made the first translation and included it in his 1773 French edition of Franklin’s works.6 “The Way to Wealth” in his rendering became “Le Moyen de s’enricher,” and “Poor Richard Improved” was transformed, curiously enough, into “Le Pauvre Henri à son aise.” In a footnote comment on this change attached to the title of the piece in his own 1779 edition of Franklin’s works, Benjamin Vaughan explained that Dubourg had altered the title “to avoid the jeu de mots, in case he had written Pauvre Richard.”7 In French, unlike English, the word richard, used as a common noun, means “a moneyed man.” Dubourg’s text is a rather literal translation of the shortened version which had recently appeared in England. This first translation of Father Abraham’s speech attracted little attention in France.

Apparently the next publication in French appeared in the spring of 1777, but in a journal actually published in London. A semi-weekly, Courier de l’Europe, Gazette Anglo-Françoise, was subsidized by the French government and served as a vehicle for propaganda, circulating both in the British Isles and on the Continent. A Scottish reader wrote the editor from Edinburgh, March 7, 1777, sending him a copy of Franklin’s composition (probably taken from The Scots Magazine where it had appeared in the January issue of that year) and urged that both the original piece and his own letter be translated and printed. The editor of the Courier complied and, in translating the canny Scot’s letter, quoted him as declaring that he regarded Franklin’s proverbs as “la quintessence de la sagesse accumulée de tous les siècles.” Since the version which came from Edinburgh was the full “Preliminary Address” that had appeared in 1758 in The Grand Magazine and The London Chronicle, the French translation, which was printed in six installments in Courier de l’Europe from March 21 through May 30, 1777, was also essentially a translation of what Franklin had originally written, rather than the shortened form Dubourg had used.8

In the same year a third translation, made by Antoine-François Quétant, possibly with the assistance of Jean-Baptiste Lécuy (Lesqui), appeared in Paris. The title page indicates that the pamphlet was issued “à Philadelphie Et se trouve à Paris, chez Ruault, Libraire rue de la Harpe,” but the mention of the American city was doubtless only a dodge to escape the requirement of a royal license. The work received a new title, one which was destined to become as familiar in France (and in American naval history through the name of John Paul Jones’s ship) as “The Way to Wealth” was becoming in England: La Science du Bonhomme Richard, ou moyen facile de payer les impôts. The text was taken, as that in the Courier de l’Europe had been, from the full original version but the translation was in somewhat more idiomatic French than either of its predecessors had been.9

Franklin’s presence in France and his great popularity led to almost instant acceptance of La Science du Bonhomme Richard and to its widespread popularity. There were four new editions in 1778 in Paris and one in Avignon the next year. Enthusiasm spread to the French-speaking parts of Switzerland and editions appeared in Lausanne in 1778 and 1779. Then, the market apparently being saturated for the time being, there was a lull, but in 1786 two more printings of the Quétant translation were issued in Paris. An anthology in French containing the piece from Poor Richard was published in 1789 in both Brussels and Utrecht editions.

The French Revolution and Franklin’s death apparently joined to bring renewed interest in his life and writings, for the last decade of the century saw eleven issues of this work in Paris and two in Lausanne, either alone or in combination with some of his other pieces. One of the Paris editions contained a new translation by J. Castéra.1 The most unusual, and apparently one of the most popular versions, appeared in 1795. It has a title page in English: The Way to Wealth or Poor Richard Improved by Benj. Franklin, followed by a brief preface and the text of the piece in English; then a French title page: La Science du Bonhomme Richard, ou moyen facile de payer les impôts. Par Benj. Franklin, followed by a longer preface and the text in French. These in turn are followed by several of Franklin’s other short pieces translated into French, for two of which the English originals are also provided. The most curious feature of this publication is that the English text of the Poor Richard composition is the shortened “Way to Wealth” version, while the French text is the full original in the Quétant translation. This composite work appeared in six distinct issues in a single year—one of them a particularly handsome example of the bookmaker’s art, of which six copies were printed on large paper and eight on vellum.

The first known Italian translation appeared in a periodical Scelta di opuscoli interessanti published in Milan in 1775, with another publication in Turin in the same year and a new Milan edition in 1781. The next printing is a 22-page pamphlet licensed for publication in 1776 but with no place of issue indicated. Seven more Italian printings during the eighteenth century are evidence of the widespread interest in Franklin in the peninsula which he wished to visit but never did.2 Eighteenth-century translations into other languages may have been considerably fewer, though some examples have been found, as noted earlier, in Dutch, Gaelic, German, and Swedish.

This account of the most important piece in Poor Richard improved for 1758 and of its widespread reprintings makes no attempt to pursue its history for the years since 1800. It is perhaps enough to say that the popularity of Father Abraham’s speech during the author’s own lifetime and the following decade has continued and has spread to many other lands. Although most of the proverbs and maxims it contains may already have been familiar in one form or another in several languages, Franklin’s method of bringing them together into a single related series gave them added force and impact and created what is undoubtedly the world’s best-known homily on industry, financial prudence, and thrift. As to following Father Abraham’s advice and profiting from it, probably most of the millions of readers of this piece—like the people at the vendue—have enjoyed it enormously, have applauded it loudly and long, and then have reverted to their usual practices. One thing, however, is certain: they have bought and read Father Abraham’s speech in all its different forms in unknown thousands of copies—and the publishers, at least, have profited from their enthusiasm.

As to the speech itself, one may agree with D. H. Lawrence that Poor Richard’s “tags” are detestable, or with Franklin’s Scottish admirer that these proverbs are “the quintessence of the wisdom accumulated in all the ages,” or one may take a position somewhere in between. In any case, one can recognize the skill with which Franklin wove his maxims together into a connected discourse, and appreciate the fun he had doing it while on his long voyage to England.