Benjamin Franklin: The First Civilized American

New York: Brentano's Publishers, 1926. Fourth Printing. Hardcover. Fair. xii, 332 pages. Illustrated endpapers. Footnotes. Illustrations (including two fold-outs). Index. Wear along the edges as well as damage to the spine of the cover. The binding is weak at the hinges and has been restrengthened with glue. Previous owner's bookplate. Charles Phillips Russell was a journalist and biographer who taught both in the English department and in the journalism school at the University of North Carolina, mentoring journalists and writers alike. He is best known for his popular biographies of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Paul Jones. Russell, Charles Phillips (5 Aug. 1884-20 Nov. 1974) was a teacher, author, and newspaperman. He was graduated in 1904 from The University of North Carolina, where he was editor of The Tar Heel and one of the founders of the Golden Fleece, an honorary society. After graduation he worked on the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune and London Daily Express. In 1931 Russell returned to Chapel Hill to teach creative writing at The University of North Carolina for the next twenty-five years. The Atlantic Monthly described his class, often held outdoors under the trees, as one of the four best in the United States. His numerous books ranged from an early travel account of Mexico and the Yucatan, Red Tiger to highly regarded biographies. His book about his great-aunt Cornelia Phillips Spencer, The Woman Who Rang the Bell, received the North Carolina Mayflower Award. Russell was the first president of the North Carolina Society of County and Local Historians and the author of North Carolina in the Revolutionary War. It's with equal measures of unstinting respect and gentle reproach that renowned biographer Phillips Russell tackles the life of one of the legendary figures of colonial America and the Revolution, a figure he deems "mirthful, generous, open-minded, learned, tolerant, and humor-loving...the first American man of the world." A delight to read, this is a cheerful, warmly admiring recounting of the story of the printer and the politician, the debaucher and the diplomat, a man whose "chief weakness" was a lack of aptitude for mathematics, who was "not above looking to the church to do police duty over his womenfolk," who was "midwife at the birth of the world's first great republic." Profusely illustrated and bursting with the author's enthusiasm as well as its subject's abundant personality, this is a classic of American historical literature. Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705 - April 17, 1790) was an American polymath, a leading writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Among the most influential intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, a drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence, and the first postmaster general. Franklin became a successful newspaper editor and printer in Philadelphia, the leading city in the colonies, publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette at age 23. He became wealthy publishing this and Poor Richard's Almanack, which he wrote under the pseudonym "Richard Saunders". After 1767, he was associated with the Pennsylvania Chronicle, a newspaper known for its revolutionary sentiments and criticisms of the policies of the British Parliament and the Crown. He pioneered and was the first president of the Academy and College of Philadelphia, which opened in 1751 and later became the University of Pennsylvania. He organized and was the first secretary of the American Philosophical Society and was elected its president in 1769. He was appointed deputy postmaster-general for the British colonies in 1753, which enabled him to set up the first national communications network.