THE preface Franklin wrote for the 1758 almanac — Father Abraham's speech, stitched from twenty-five years of Poor Richard's proverbs — outlived every other thing his press produced. As The Way to Wealth it became the most reprinted piece of American prose of the century, in every European language, and at the end of the century it received the tribute one printer pays another: an edition by the finest press in France.
The Way to Wealth, or Poor Richard Improved · La Science du Bonhomme Richard · with Franklin's Epitaph and Bodoni's Catalogue
'The prettiest edition yet printed' (Ford), with the English and French texts, Franklin's letters, the dialogue with the gout, his advice to emigrants, the epitaph in both languages, and Bodoni's catalogue of the books he had printed. One of six copies on large paper. Renouard, the greatest French bibliophile-publisher of his age, chose to end the printer's century with the printer's own text.
Between the smallpox pamphlet a Boston apprentice set in 1722 and the large-paper Renouard of 1795 lie seventy-three years, three presses, a fortune, and a republic. The objects are the evidence. The printer is the story.
The Press
Miller, C. William. Benjamin Franklin's Philadelphia Printing, 1728–1766: A Descriptive Bibliography. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1974. '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.
Frasca, Ralph. Benjamin Franklin's Printing Network: Disseminating Virtue in Early America. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006.
Franklin
Lemay, J. A. Leo. The Life of Benjamin Franklin. 3 vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006–2009.
Ford, Paul Leicester. Franklin Bibliography. Brooklyn, 1889. 'Ford' numbers refer to it.
The Inoculation Controversy
Coss, Stephen. The Fever of 1721: The Epidemic That Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016.