Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography

Glossary

• apprehended expected
• correspondence interaction
• disquisitions formal or scholarly discussions
• erratum error
• the general conversation of the Americans the public intellectual life
• his death that of the other young man interested in Miss Read
• I set on foot I began
• the Junto a discussion group established by Franklin in Philadelphia in 1727
• Mr. Grace Robert Grace, a friend of Franklin’s
• Mrs. Read the mother of Franklin’s future wife, Deborah Read
• my giddiness and inconstancy my unreliability
• scrivener professional secretary or copyist
• state statement, sometimes used with “of” to mean “statement on”
• subscription library a lending library supported by regular monthly dues, or subscriptions
• throve past tense of “thrive”; succeeded
• thus clubbing our books to a common library donating our books to a regular lending library
• with establish’d correspondence with regular clients