Updated on January 1, 2025: This book has been sold.
Full title: Poor Richard s Almanack. Selections from the Prefaces, Apothegms, and Rimes, with a Facsimile in Reduction of the Almanack for 1733. By Benjamin Franklin (Richard Saunders, Philomath) Published in New York by The Century Co. in 1898. 221 pp.
In excellent condition featuring a highly detailed embossed leather cover. Complete with 221 pages plus a facsimile of the original 1733 edition at back of book.
Size: 2 7/8” x 5 1/8”
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Historical background
On December 28, 1732, Benjamin Franklin announced in The Pennsylvania Gazette that he had just printed and published the first edition of The Poor Richard, by Richard Saunders, Philomath.
Franklin published the first Poor Richard's Almanack on December 28, 1732, and continued to publish new editions for 25 years, bringing him much economic success and popularity. The almanack sold as many as 10,000 copies a year. In 1735, 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. . . .
Franklin borrowed the name "Richard Saunders" from the seventeenth-century author of Rider's British Merlin, a popular London almanac which continued to be published throughout the eighteenth century. 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.
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.
Source: Wikipedia
