Item #79457 Way to Wealth or Poor Richarad Improved. Benjamin FRANKLIN.

Way to Wealth or Poor Richarad Improved.

Item #79457

FRANKLIN, Benjamin. The Way to Wealth or Poor Richarad Improved. Paris [but actually Dijon]: Printed for Ant. Aug. Renouard, 1795. [4],181,[5]pp. Contemporary gilt-bordered full tree calf, elaborate gilt spine, red morocco spine label, marbled endpapers. Boards professionally strengthened, wear to upper corners, early owner's inscription on ?-title, small waterstain to lower fixed corner of ?-title. Internally clean. Very good. Ford, 134, "The prettiest edition yet printed." First edition printed in France of Franklin's Poor Richard, with text consecutively in both English and French, and the earliest publication of several significant Franklin texts. The Way To Wealth was originally published as a preface to Poor Richard's Almanac for 1758, then separately issued in 1760 under the title Father Abraham's Speech. Father Abraham reminds his audience that idleness, pride, and folly made human beings poor, and that the solution to social and economic problems lies in the individual, a message reinforced by the proverb, "God helps those who help themselves." In the present edition, The Way to Wealth is followed by A.F. Quotient's French translation, with a special titlepage in French. There are also several letters included which are printed here for the first time, "Dialogue Entree la Gout et Franklin," Franklin's epitaph (written by himself). A handsome edition of this work.

Price: $6,500.00

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