
''Poor Richard's Almanack'' (sometimes ''Almanac'') was a yearly
almanac
An almanac (also spelled almanack and almanach) is a regularly published listing of a set of current information about one or multiple subjects. It includes information like weather forecasting, weather forecasts, farmers' sowing, planting dates ...
published by
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and Political philosophy, political philosopher.#britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the m ...
, who adopted the
pseudonym
A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...
of "Poor Richard" or "Richard Saunders" for this purpose. The publication appeared continually from 1732 to 1758. It sold exceptionally well for a pamphlet published in the
Thirteen Colonies
The Thirteen Colonies were the British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America which broke away from the British Crown in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), and joined to form the United States of America.
The Thirteen C ...
; print runs reached 10,000 per year.
Franklin, the American
inventor
An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...
,
statesman, and accomplished
publisher and printer, achieved success with ''Poor Richard's Almanack''. Almanacks were very popular books in
colonial America, offering a mixture of seasonal weather forecasts, practical household hints, puzzles, and other amusements. ''Poor Richard's Almanack'' was also popular for its extensive use of
wordplay, and some of the witty phrases coined in the work survive in the contemporary American
vernacular
Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken language, spoken form of language, particularly when perceptual dialectology, perceived as having lower social status or less Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige than standard language, which is mor ...
.
History
On December 28, 1732,
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and Political philosophy, political philosopher.#britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the m ...
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,
[Independence Hall Association (1999–2007)] 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.
[Oracle ThinkQuest (2003)] 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.
Contents
The ''Almanack'' contained the
calendar
A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A calendar date, date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is ...
,
weather
Weather is the state of the atmosphere, describing for example the degree to which it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloud cover, cloudy. On Earth, most weather phenomena occur in the lowest layer of the planet's atmo ...
,
poem
Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...
s,
sayings, and
astronomical
Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest include ...
and
astrological information that a typical almanac of the period would contain. Franklin also included the occasional
mathematical exercise, and the ''Almanack'' from 1750 features an early example of
demographics
Demography () is the statistical study of human populations: their size, composition (e.g., ethnic group, age), and how they change through the interplay of fertility (births), mortality (deaths), and migration.
Demographic analysis examin ...
. It is chiefly remembered, however, for being a repository of Franklin's
aphorisms and
proverb
A proverb (from ) or an adage is a simple, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Proverbs are often metaphorical and are an example of formulaic speech, formulaic language. A proverbial phrase ...
s, many of which live on in
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lang ...
. These maxims typically counsel thrift and courtesy, with a dash of cynicism.
In the spaces that occurred between noted calendar days, Franklin included proverbial sentences about industry and frugality. Several of these sayings were borrowed from an earlier writer,
Lord Halifax, many of whose aphorisms sprang from, "...
basic skepticism directed against the motives of men, manners, and the age." In 1757, Franklin made a selection of these and prefixed them to the almanac as the address of an old man to the people attending an auction. This was later published as ''
The Way to Wealth'', and was popular in both America and England.
Poor Richard
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
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish writer, essayist, satirist, and Anglican cleric. In 1713, he became the Dean (Christianity), dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and was given the sobriquet "Dean Swi ...
'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
Astrology is a range of Divination, divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that propose that information about human affairs and terrestrial events may be discerned by studying the apparent positions ...
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.
Serialization
One of the appeals of the ''Almanack'' was that it contained various "news stories" in
serial format, so that readers would purchase it year after year to find out what happened to the
protagonist
A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a ...
s. One of the earliest of these was the "prediction" that the author's "good Friend and Fellow-Student, Mr.
Titan Leeds" would die on October 17 of that year, followed by the rebuttal of Mr. Leeds himself that he would die, not on the 17th, but on October 26. Appealing to his readers, Franklin urged them to purchase the next year or two or three or four editions to show their support for his prediction. The following year, Franklin expressed his regret that he was too ill to learn whether he or Leeds was correct. Nevertheless, the ruse had its desired effect: people purchased the ''Almanack'' to find out who was correct. (Later editions of the ''Almanack'' would claim that Leeds had died and that the person claiming to be Leeds was an impostor; Leeds, in fact, died in 1738, which prompted Franklin to applaud the supposed impostor for ending his ruse.)
Criticism
For some writers the content of the ''Almanack'' became inextricably linked with Franklin's character—and not always to favorable effect. Both
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (né Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion.
He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associat ...
and
Herman Melville
Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works ar ...
caricatured the ''Almanack''—and Franklin by extension—in their writings, while
James Russell Lowell, reflecting on the public unveiling in
Boston
Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
of a statue to honor Franklin, wrote:
... we shall find out that Franklin was born in Boston, and invented being struck with lightning and printing and the Franklin medal, and that he had to move to Philadelphia
Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...
because great men were so plenty in Boston that he had no chance, and that he revenged himself on his native town by saddling it with the Franklin stove, and that he discovered the almanac, and that a penny saved is a penny lost, or something of the kind.
The ''Almanack'' was also a reflection of the
social norms and
social mores of his times, rather than a philosophical document setting a path for new-freedoms, as the works of Franklin's contemporaries,
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (, 1743July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the United States Declaration of Indepe ...
,
John Adams
John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before Presidency of John Adams, his presidency, he was a leader of ...
, and
Thomas Paine were. Historian
Howard Zinn offers, as an example, the adage "Let thy maidservant be faithful, strong, and homely" as indication of Franklin's belief in the legitimacy of controlling the sexual lives of servants for the economic benefit of their masters.
At least one modern biographer has published the claim that Franklin "stole", not borrowed, the name of Richard Saunders from the deceased astrologer-doctor. Franklin also "borrowed—apparently without asking—and adapted the title of an almanac his brother
James Franklin was publishing at Newport: ''Poor Robin's Almanack'' (itself appropriated from a seventeenth-century almanac published under the same title in London)".
Cultural impact
Louis XVI of France
Louis XVI (Louis-Auguste; ; 23 August 1754 – 21 January 1793) was the last king of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. The son of Louis, Dauphin of France (1729–1765), Louis, Dauphin of France (son and heir- ...
gave a ship to
John Paul Jones
John Paul Jones (born John Paul; July 6, 1747 – July 18, 1792) was a Scottish-born naval officer who served in the Continental Navy during the American Revolutionary War. Often referred to as the "Father of the American Navy", Jones is regard ...
who renamed it after the ''Almanack'' author—''
Bonhomme Richard'', or "Goodman (that is, a polite title of address for a commoner who is not a member of the gentry) Richard" (the first of
several US warships so named). The ''Almanack'' was translated into Italian, along with the
Pennsylvania State Constitution (which Franklin helped draft) at the establishment of the
Cisalpine Republic
The Cisalpine Republic (; ) was a sister republic or a client state of France in Northern Italy that existed from 1797 to 1799, with a second version until 1802.
Creation
After the Battle of Lodi in May 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte organized two ...
. It was also twice translated into French, reprinted in Great Britain in
broadside for ease of posting, and was distributed by members of the
clergy
Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the ter ...
to poor parishioners. It was the first work of English literature to be translated into
Slovene, translated in 1812 by
Janez Nepomuk Primic (1785–1823).
The ''Almanack'' also had a strong cultural and economic impact in the years following publication. In
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...
, changes in monetary policy in regard to foreign expenses were evident for years after the issuing of the ''Almanack''. Later writers such as
Noah Webster were inspired by the almanac, and it went on to influence other publications of this type such as the ''
Old Farmer's Almanac''.
Sociologist
Max Weber
Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German Sociology, sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economy, political economist who was one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sc ...
considered ''Poor Richard's Almanack'' and Franklin to reflect the "spirit of capitalism" in a form of "classical" purity." This is why he filled the pages of Chapter 2 of his 1905 book ''
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
''The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism'' () is a book written by Max Weber, a German sociologist, economist, and politician. First written as a series of essays, the original German text was composed in 1904 and 1905, and was trans ...
'' with illustrative quotations from Franklin's almanacks.
Numerous
farmer's almanacs trace their format and tradition to ''Poor Richard's Almanack;'' the ''
Old Farmer's Almanac'', for instance, has included a picture of Franklin on its cover since 1851.
In 1958, the United States mobilized its naval forces in response to an
attack on Vice President Richard Nixon in
Caracas
Caracas ( , ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas (CCS), is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the northern p ...
, Venezuela. The operation was code-named "Poor Richard".
See also
* ''
The Papers of Benjamin Franklin''
Citations
Bibliography
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See also:
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External links
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* (Click "find by author" and select "Franklin" for a complete list.)
{{Authority control
1732 non-fiction books
18th-century books
1732 establishments in Pennsylvania
1758 disestablishments in the Thirteen Colonies
Publications established in 1732
Publications disestablished in 1758
Almanacs
Agriculture books
Astronomy books
Astrological texts
American non-fiction books
Proverbs
Works by Benjamin Franklin
Works about weather