WHEN Franklin's estate was settled, the Library Company, the Philosophical Society, the Hospital, the Academy that had become a university, the fire company, and the insurance office were all still standing, and all still are. So was the press, in David Hall's hands and then his sons'. Rush, who had been sent to Edinburgh by Franklin's letter and sat beside him in the Congress, delivered the Philosophical Society's eulogy on his mentor, and then outlived him by twenty-three years.
The Soiferman Collection was built on the premise that these two men, read together, explain the city that made the republic. This fourth catalog has followed the older one after he left the press: from a glass tube sent by Peter Collinson to a fur cap at Versailles, and from a revenue stamp to a lantern hung in an elm. The objects are the evidence. The printer is the story.
The objects are the evidence. The printer is the story.
Benjamin Franklin: Biography
Lemay, J. A. Leo. The Life of Benjamin Franklin. 3 vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006–2009. The most detailed life, to 1757.
Wood, Gordon S. The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin. New York: Penguin, 2004.
Isaacson, Walter. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.
The Press
Miller, C. William. Benjamin Franklin's Philadelphia Printing, 1728–1766: A Descriptive Bibliography. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1974. The standard census; 'Miller' numbers in this catalog refer to it.
Green, James N., and Peter Stallybrass. Benjamin Franklin: Writer and Printer. New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll, 2006.
The Electrical Philosophy
Cohen, I. Bernard. Benjamin Franklin's Science. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990.
Ford, Paul Leicester. Franklin Bibliography. Brooklyn, 1889. 'Ford' numbers refer to it.
The Stamp Act and the Revolution
Morgan, Edmund S., and Helen M. Morgan. The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953.
Schiff, Stacy. A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America. New York: Henry Holt, 2005.