Benjamin Franklin's writings represent a long career of literary, scientific, and political efforts over a lifetime that extended nearly the entire eighteenth century. This volume includes Franklin's reflections on diverse questions such as philosophy and religion, social status, electricity, American national characteristics, war, and the status of women. Nearly sixty years separate the earliest writings from the latest, an interval during which Franklin continually balanced the puritan values of his upbringing with the modern American world to which his career served as prologue. This edition provides a new text of the Autobiography, established with close reference to Franklin's original manuscript. It also includes a new transcription of the 1726 journal and several pieces that have recently been identified as Franklin's own work.