I recently read Jill Lepore’s Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin. It’s about the little sister of Benjamin Franklin and compares her life to his. Writing a biography of an obscure person is hard, especially when most of her letters to her brother are lost. (Lepore ssays “In writing this book I have had to stare down a truishm: the lives of the obscure make good fiction but bad history.”) So Lepore fills in with lots of stories about life in Boston, where Jane lived, and the period leading up to the Revolutionary War. As Benjamin was one of the best known printers in the colonies, it’s also the story of early printing and publishing in the British North America. And finally it’s partly a story of letter writing and spelling. Jane could read, but her spelling was mostly phonetic. Jane’s life was hard (twelve children, most of them didn’t live past 30, and 2 went insane), but she’s feisty and opinionated and awfully good company.
I recently read Jill Lepore’s Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin. It’s about the little sister of Benjamin Franklin and compares her life to his. Writing a biography of an obscure person is hard, especially when most of her letters to her brother are lost. (Lepore ssays “In writing this book I have had to stare down a truishm: the lives of the obscure make good fiction but bad history.”) So Lepore fills in with lots of stories about life in Boston, where Jane lived, and the period leading up to the Revolutionary War. As Benjamin was one of the best known printers in the colonies, it’s also the story of early printing and publishing in the British North America. And finally it’s partly a story of letter writing and spelling. Jane could read, but her spelling was mostly phonetic. Jane’s life was hard (twelve children, most of them didn’t live past 30, and 2 went insane), but she’s feisty and opinionated and awfully good company.