⚖ MONEYPOOR RICHARDANNO 1733
“Light purse, heavy heart.”
- Richard Saunders001 / 543
BY OTHERS◎Sunday, January 1, 1758
by Benjamin Franklin
All 543 maxims from Poor Richard's Almanack at the top - then fifteen working rooms drawn from Franklin's actual self-improvement system (the 13 Virtues, the morning and evening questions, the Junto interrogatories, prudential algebra, the errata of the first edition) and from his unusual side (the air bath, the chess metaphor, the 1745 letter, the 1781 satire, the epitaph he wrote at 22).
tags: franklin, almanack, colonial, aphorisms, virtue, self-improvement, junto, autobiography
Poor Richard, 1733.
- AN -
Almanack
For the Year of CHRIST
MDCCXXXIII
Being the First after LEAP YEAR:
CONTAINING
- The Lunations, Eclipſes, Judgment of the Weather, Spring Tides, Planets Motions & mutual Aſpects;
- Sun and Moon's Riſing and Setting; the Length of Days;
- Courts & Obſervable Days;
- -and- five hundred and forty-three Wiſe and uſeful Sayings of Richard Saunders, his maxims for the conduct of an Affluent & Induſtrious Life.
Fitted to the Latitude of Forty Degrees, and a Meridian of Five Hours Weſt from London; but may, without ſenſible Error, ſerve all the Northern Colonies.
By RICHARD SAUNDERS, Philom.
PHILADELPHIA :
Printed and Sold by B. FRANKLIN, at the New
Printing-Office near the Market.
Benjamin Franklin published Poor Richard's Almanack for twenty-six years (1733–1758) under the pen name Richard Saunders. The 543 maxims printed at the heads and feet of its calendar pages became, with the King James Bible, the moral vocabulary of colonial America. The page below renders them as working apparatus - ten games drawn from Franklin's actual self-improvement system, and five from his unusual side.
Five hundred and forty-three maxims at the top, then fifteen working rooms. Open the Almanack below - draw a maxim, search a phrase, or unfold the whole catalogue - then walk down through the interactive sections that take Franklin's load-bearing instruments (the thirteen virtues, the morning and evening questions, the Junto's twenty-four interrogatories, the prudential algebra) and turn them into apparatus you can use, with five of his odder pieces at the end.
I. Poor Richard's Almanack - five hundred and forty-three maxims
The whole catalogue of Poor Richard's Almanack (1733–1758), drawable one at a time, searchable by phrase, or unfoldable as a wall. The sayings the colonies actually carried in their heads.
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Poor Richard's Almanack
Philadelphia · 1733 – 1758
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The fifteen rooms that follow operationalise the system behind the maxims - the disciplines Franklin ran on himself in private.
Colophon
The Almanack ran for twenty-six years (1733–1758); Franklin published it under the pseudonym Richard Saunders, "Philom." (a contraction of Philomath, lover of learning), and printed it from his New Printing-Office near the Market in Philadelphia. By 1748 he had printed close to ten thousand copies a year, more than any other almanack in the colonies.
The fifteen interactive sections operationalise material drawn from across Franklin's writings:
- The Thirteen Virtues - the moral table from his Autobiography, written in his late sixties about his late twenties.
- The Daily Questions - from the same Autobiography chapter; the morning and evening entries in his "Scheme of Employment for the Twenty-Four Hours of a Natural Day."
- The Junto Interrogatories - the twenty-four standing questions for his Friday-evening philosophical society, founded 1727.
- A Penny Saved - the Almanack itself, plus the long-trust arithmetic of his 1789 codicil to his will.
- Time Is Money - Advice to a Young Tradesman, 1748.
- Errata of the First Edition - the printer's-correction metaphor that runs through the Autobiography.
- Plough Deep - PRA 1735 and 1758.
- The Almanack & the Action - the Almanack itself, made operational.
- Prudential Algebra - the 1772 letter to Joseph Priestley on how to make hard decisions.
- Nightly Examination - the ten-o'clock review in the Autobiography's daily schedule.
- Fart Proudly - 1781 letter to the Royal Academy of Brussels.
- The Air Bath - 1768 letter to Jacques Dubourg.
- The 1745 Letter - Advice to a Young Man on Choosing a Mistress.
- The Morals of Chess - Columbian Magazine, 1786 (written c 1779).
- The Epitaph - private composition, 1728.
The complete 543-maxim Almanack sits at the top of the page in section I, searchable and unfoldable.