Poor Richard's Almanack

"Poor Richard's Almanack" (sometimes "Almanac") was a yearly almanack published by Benjamin Franklin, who adopted the pseudonym of "Poor Richard" or "Richard Saunders" for this purpose. The publication appeared continually from 1732 to 1758. It was a best seller for a pamphlet published in the American colonies; print runs reached 10,000 per year. [Goodrich (1829)] Oracle ThinkQuest (2003)]

Franklin, the American inventor, statesman, and publisher, achieved success with "Poor Richard's Almanack". Almanacks were very popular books in colonial America, with people in the colonies using them for the mixture of seasonal weather forecasts, practical household hints, puzzles, and other amusements they offered. [The History Place (1998)] "Poor Richard's Almanack" was popular for all of these reasons, and also for its extensive use of wordplay, with many examples derived from the work surviving in the contemporary American vernacular. [Innovation Philadelphia (2005)]

Content

The "Almanack" contained the calendar, weather, poems, and astronomical and astrological information that a typical almanack of the period would contain. Franklin also included the occasional mathematical exercise, and the "Almanack" from 1750 features an early example of demographics. It is chiefly remembered, however, for being a repository of Franklin's aphorisms and proverbs, many of which live on in American English. These maxims typically counsel thrift and courtesy, with a dash of cynicism. [Pasles (2001), pp. 492–493]

In the spaces that occurred between noted calendar days, Franklin included proverbial sentences about industry and frugality. Several of these sayings were borrowed from an earlier writer, Lord Halifax, many of whose aphorisms sprang from, ".... [a] basic skepticism directed against the motives of men, manners, and the age." [Newcomb (1955), pp. 535–536] In 1757, Franklin made a selection of these and prefixed them to the almanac as the address of an old man to the people attending an auction. This was later published as, "The Way to Wealth", and was popular in both America and England. [Wilson (2006)]

Poor Richard

Franklin created the Poor Richard persona based in part on Jonathan Swift's pseudonymous character, "Isaac Bickerstaff." In a series of three letters in 1708 and 1709, known as the Bickerstaff papers, "Bickerstaff" predicted the imminent death of astrologer and almanac maker John Partridge. Franklin's Poor Richard, like Bickerstaff, claimed to be a philomath and astrologer and, like Bickerstaff, predicted the deaths of actual astrologers who wrote traditional almanacs. In the early editions of "Poor Richard's Almanack", predicting and falsely reporting the deaths of these astrologers—much to their dismay—was something of a running joke. However, Franklin's endearing character of "Poor" Richard Saunders, along with his wife Bridget, was ultimately used to frame (if comically) what was intended as a serious resource that people would buy year after year. To that end, the satirical edge of Swift's character is largely absent in Poor Richard. Richard was presented as distinct from Franklin himself, occasionally referring to the latter as his printer. [Ross (1940), pp. 785–791]

In later editions, the original Richard Saunders character gradually disappeared, replaced by a Poor Richard, who largely stood in for Franklin and his own practical scientific and business perspectives. By 1758, the original character was even more distant from the practical advice and proverbs of the almanac, which Franklin presented as coming from "Father Abraham," who in turn got his sayings from Poor Richard. [Ross (1940), pp. 791–794]

History

Franklin began publishing "Poor Richard's Almanack" on December 28, 1732,Independence Hall Association (1999–2007)] and would go on to publish it for 25 years, bringing his publisher much economic success and popularity. The almanack sold as many as 10,000 copies a year. In 1753, upon the death of Franklin's brother, James, Franklin sent 500 copies of "Poor Richard's" to his widow for free, so that she could make money selling them.

erialization

One of the appeals of the "Almanack" was that it contained various "news stories" in serial format, so that readers would purchase it year after year to find out what happened to the protagonists. One of the earliest of these was the "prediction" that the author's "good Friend and Fellow-Student, Mr. Titan Leeds" would die on October 17 of that year, followed by the rebuttal of Mr. Leeds himself that he would die, not on the 17th, but on October 26. Appealing to his readers, Franklin urged them to purchase the next year's edition to show their support for his prediction. The following year, Franklin expressed his regret that he was too ill to learn whether he or Leeds was correct. Nevertheless, the ruse had its desired effect: people purchased the "Almanack" to find out who was correct. [Laughter (1999–2003)]

Criticism

For some writers the content of the "Almanack" became inextricably linked with Franklin's character–and not always to favorable effect. Both Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville caricatured the "Almanack"–and Franklin by extension–in their writings, while James Russell Lowell, reflecting on the public unveiling in Boston of a statue to honor Franklin, wrote:

…we shall find out that Franklin was born in Boston, and invented being struck with lightning and printing and the Franklin medal, and that he had to move to Philadelphia because great men were so plenty in Boston that he had no chance, and that he revenged himself on his native town by saddling it with the Franklin stove, and that he discovered the almanac, and that a penny saved is a penny lost, or something of the kind. [Miles (1957), p. 141.]

The "Almanack" was also a reflection of the norms and social mores of his times, rather than a philosophical document setting a path for new-freedoms, as the works of Franklin's contemporaries, Jefferson, Adams, or Paine were. Historian Howard Zinn offers, as an example, the adage "Let thy maidservant be faithful, strong, and homely" as indication of Franklin's belief in the legitimacy of controlling the sexual lives of servants for the economic benefit of their masters. [Zinn, 1980, 44.]

Cultural impact

Napoleon Bonaparte considered the "Almanack" significant enough to translate it into Italian, along with the Pennsylvania State Constitution (which Franklin helped draft), when he established the Cisalpine Republic in 1797. [Dauer (1976), p. 50.] The "Almanack" was also twice translated into French, reprinted in Great Britain in broadside for ease of posting, and was distributed by members of the clergy to poor parishioners.

The "Almanack" also had a strong cultural and economic impact in the years following publication. In Pennsylvania, changes in monetary policy in regards to foreign expenses were evident for years after the issuing of the "Almanack". The King of France named a ship given to John Paul Jones after the "Almanack's" author – "Bonhomme Richard", or "Clever Richard." A later almanack by Noah Webster, "The Old Farmer's Almanac", was inspired in part by "Poor Richard's". [Kneeland "et al" (1894), pp. 46–47]

Notes

References

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*cite web | title=Benjamin Franklin and his Times | first=Mary | last=Bellis | accessdate=2007-04-17 | work=About.com | url=http://inventors.about.com/cs/inventorsalphabet/a/Ben_Franklin_3.htm
*cite web | author=Bucknell University | title=100 Years of Carnegie: Franklin: Poor Richard's Almanack | url=http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/History/Carnegie/franklin/poorrichard.html | date=2004 | accessdate=2007-04-16
*cite journal | title=The Impact of the American Independence and the American Constitution: 1776–1848; with a Brief Epilogue | first=Manning J. | last=Dauer | journal=The Journal of Politics | volume=38 | issue=3 | month=August | year=1976 | pages=37–55 | doi=10.2307/2129573
*cite book | author=Goodrich, Rev. Charles A. | title=Lives of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence | year=1829 | language=
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*cite web | title=Benjamin Franklin Timeline | author= Independence Hall Association | date=1999–2007 | accessdate=2007-04-17 | url=http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/info/timeline.htm
*cite web | title=Printer and Publisher, Franklin Gives a "Word to the Wise" | author=Innovation Philadelphia | date=2005 | accessdate=2007-04-17 | url=http://www.ipphila.com/iplinks/v4/is3/ar2.htm
*cite book | author=Kneeland, John, Wheeler, Henry Nathan | title=Masterpieces of American Literature | year=1894 | publisher=Houghton Mifflin & Co. | location=United States | language=
*cite web | title=Golden Nuggets from U. S. History: Benjamin Franklin and "Poor Richard's Almanac" | first=Frank | last=Laughter | date=1999-2003 | accessdate=2007-04-17 | url=http://www.laughtergenealogy.com/bin/history/almanac.html
*cite web | first=Alberto | last=Lena | title=Poor Richard's Almanack | work=The Literary Encyclopedia | accessdate=2007-04-16 | date=30 January 2003 | url=http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2617
*cite journal | title=The American Image of Benjamin Franklin | first=Richard D. | last=Miles | journal=American Quarterly | volume=9 | issue=2 | month=Summer | year=1957 | pages=117–143 | doi=10.2307/2710628
*cite journal | title=Seeing 'New Englandly': Planes of Perception in Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost | first=William | last=Mulder | journal=The New England Quarterly | volume=52 | issue=4 | month=December | year=1979 | pages=550–559 | doi=10.2307/365757
*cite journal | title=Benjamin Franklin and Montaigne | first=Robert | last=Newcomb | journal=Modern Language Notes | volume=72 | issue=7 | month=November | year=1957 | pages=489–491 | doi=10.2307/3043511
*cite journal | title=Poor Richard's Debt to Lord Halifax | first=Robert | last=Newcomb | journal=PMLA | volume=70 | issue=3 | month=June | year=1955 | pages=535–539 | doi=10.2307/460054
*cite web| author=Oracle ThinkQuest | url=http://library.thinkquest.org/22254/pra2.htm | title=Poor Richard's Almanac |publisher= ThinkQuest : Library |date=2003|accessdate=2007-04-17
*cite journal | title=The Lost Squares of Dr. Franklin: Ben Franklin's Missing Squares and the Secret of the Magic Circle | first=Paul C. | last=Pasles | journal=The American Mathematical Monthly | volume=108 | issue=6 | month=June-July | year=2001 | pages=489–511 | doi=10.2307/2695704
*cite journal | title=The Character of Poor Richard: Its Source and Alteration | first=John F. | last=Ross | journal=PMLA | volume=55 | issue=3 | month=September | year=1940 | pages=785–794 | doi=10.2307/458740
*cite journal | title=Time, Slavery and Plantation Capitalism in the Ante-Bellum American South | first=Mark M. | last=Smith | journal=Past and Present | issue=150 | month=February | year=1996 | pages=142–168
*cite web | title=English Colonial Era: 1700 to 1763 | author=The History Place | date=1998 | accessdate=2007-04-17 | url=http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/revolution/rev-col.htm
*cite web | title=A Calendar History | first=Pip | last=Wilson | date=2006 | accessdate=2007-04-17 | url=http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/calendar_history.html
*cite book | first=Howard | last=Zinn | authorlink=Howard Zinn | title=A People's History of the United States | publisher=HarperCollins Publishers | location=New York | year=1980

Bibliography

The prefaces to the Almanack are also reprinted in:
* Franklin, Benjamin; J.A. Leo Lemay (ed). "Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography, Poor Richard: Autobiography, Poor Richard, and Later Writings." New York: Library of America, 2005. ISBN 1883011531.

External links

* [http://www.gettysburg.edu/~tshannon/his341/colonialamer.htm Scanned images of three online editions of Poor Richard's (1733, 1753, 1759)]
* [http://www.flickr.com/photos/franklinremix/sets/72057594064843539/ High-Quality Scanned Images of several pages of Poor Richard's Almanac]