Benjamin Franklin | Franklin's autobiography, extra-illustrated with a signed document, autograph letters, engraved portraits, and more

Benjamin Franklin

The Autobiography... Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin & Company, 1906

Large 8vo (276 x 189 mm). Limited edition, one of 1,000 copies, illustrated with photo-reproductions and photogravures, and extra illustrated with 66 items, including documents, autograph letters, engravings, and more, bound in, on stubs, laid down, or window-mounted; faint toning mostly in the margins, occasional spotting, infrequent offsetting. Full crushed red morocco by Macdonald, spine gilt with raised bands and six compartments, boards triple gilt-ruled, board edges and dentelles gilt, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt; rubbing and light wear at spine extremities and two corners, the binding defective with the front hinge fully cracked, the front board and spine separated from the text block, but holding at the rear hinge, the red silk ribbon detached but present.

A finely bound, extra-illustrated, limited edition of Franklin's autobiography. There are 66 additional items included in this work.

The highlights include:

1) Document signed by Benjamin Franklin as President of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, May 23, 1786. Addressed to Treasurer David Rittenhouse, requesting that a payment of £125 be paid to Charles Biddle for salary due him as Vice President of the State.

2) 2-page autograph letter signed from William Carmichael to John Lamb, July 1786, mentioning Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin and discussing prisoners from the Barbary War.

3) One-page autograph letter signed from Peter Collinson to Cadwalader Colden, May 1761, discussing Lord Halifax quitting the Board of Trade, and noting that "Your son David's Electrical Papers I have received from our friend Franklin and have tied them up with your principles to be desposed of as you have directed."

4) 3-page autograph letter signed from John Bigelow to Ellen Douglas Steadman, March 1890, on mourning stationery, discussing legal and political matters.

5) Pennsylvania Fire Insurance Certificate for $1,000, dated 1838, engraved, with a portrait of Franklin.

6) Engraved portraits, many of Franklin, but also Charles II, John Locke, Rev. George Whitehead, John Fothergill, Sir Henry Clinton, and others.

7) Engraved views of New York, Yale College, Westminster in London, and Charleston in South Carolina.

8) A nineteenth-century Franklin-inspired Rebus, "The Art of Making Money … by Doctor Franklin," folded, split along central fold, with a few chips and tears at the edges.

9) Historical prints, such as "Drafting the Declaration of Independence," and more.

PROVENANCE

Heritage Auctions, 12 November, 2020, lot 47013 (undesignated consignor)