American in Europe

Benjamin Franklin's lifetime was marked by great change. His birth in 1706 took place the year before the Union of Scottish and English Parliaments. Cotton Mather's "Magnalia Christi Americana "had been published four years earlier. The sons and daughters of the Pilgrim Fathers could still be seen in Boston streets. When Franklin died in 1790 Burke published his "Reflections on the Revolution in France," and Blake published "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell." Philadelphia had become the nation's capital, and would remain so until 1800. In 1791 the Bill of Rights was ratified and the First Bank of the United States incorporated. In 1792 the cornerstone of the White House was laid, the New York Stock Exchange opened, and Kentucky admitted as the fifteenth State of the Union. The America into which Franklin was born had a fragmented colonial structure. When he died the United States had an embryonic modern economy, and uneasy relations with Great Britain. Franklin played a large part in the transformation of both nations, and he did so by responding flexibly, often using the weapons of irony and parody, to changing times. If he deserves to be known as a prototypical American, it is as a trickster. This brilliant and original biography of Franklin will re examine his life as that of a transatlantic figure. Examining his time in London its effect on his views of America and its Independence, illustrating the themes of his life in science, the arts and his political development it will shed new light on one of the most remarkable figures in American history.