Its so nice to be your. Thank you all for coming. This is such a treat. First of all to be in philadelphia. Franklins hometown to talk about jane who once visited here and didnt love it as much as you love the boston, but also just to be here at a Public Library and celebrate this space and all that it stands for. So thank you to the library. [applause] groovi hope none of you ever hef Jane Franklin. She led a rich investing life, and im going to try to give you a whirlwind tour of it and will be looking at some slides and i even have props. Thats how i teach. So sit back and listen to the scale that hope is unknown to you. In 1771, Benjamin Franklin sent his sister jane a pair of spectacles. Rather, he center 13 pairs of spectacles with lenses of every size from one to 13. He sent her to instructions for conducting her own eye exam. When youre at the optometrist and put the horrible thing over your face and they flick the lenses and get to say which is better, which is better . They all look the same . This is what benjamin wrote to jane. Take out a pair at a time and hold one of the glasses first against one night and then against the other looking on some small print. If the first pair fits neither, put them up again before you open a second. I advise you trying each of your eye separately because the peoples eyes are fellows. So the question this raises for me as a biographer trying to write about benjamin and Jane Franklin, what does it mean to be one of a pair . Benjamin franklin was born alas not in philadelphia but in boston, my hometown and 1706. Usually wouldve been a red sox fan. I think thats clear. Spent his sister was born six years later. This is from the Franklin Family record book chronicling their birth. He was the youngest. She was the youngest of 7. At 17 [laughter] benny and Jimmy Derrick coleman and little, no two people in of them were more alike. Jane thought of her brother as her second self, she said. They were after a fashion twins anyway, like a pair of eyes. They post a biographical dilemma because their lives could hardly have been more different. Benjamin franklin ran away when he was 17. His sister never left. He taught himself to write with weight and force and style. She never learned how to spell. The day he turned 21 he wrote her a letter. She was 14. Beginning a correspondence that would last until his death 63 years later. He became a printer, a philosopher and statesman. She became a wife, a mother and a widow. He signed the declaration of independence, the treaty of paris, and the constitution. She strained to form the letters of earning. He loved no one longer. She loved no one better. Benjamin franklin wrote more letters to his sister, jane, and he wrote to anyone else. And all her life she wrote back, letter after letter filled with news and recipes and gaza. When she was truly best and let them with a blistering opinion about politics. Franklin as you know i think you guys know more about Benjamin Franklin than i do but, you know, that he wrote the story of his life, the private life of bridgman franklin it was called when it was First Published at a well turned tale about a boy who runs away from a life of poverty and obscurity in boston and leaves all that behind, leaves him behind, leaves his sister beyond, leaves ignorance behind, leaves the past behind to become an enlightened educated independent and cool. Amanda books, a man of learning, and men of science, a man of papers, a man of letters, a spectacle. 1771 the year Benjamin Franklin said his sister jane eyeglasses is also due to begin writing that story of his life. It wasnt published until his death in 1790. Benjamin franklins autobiography is one of the most important autobiographies ever written. It helped even invent the word. The word autobiography wasnt going until 1797, seven years later. Is was a private life made public. Its also an allegory about america, the story of a man as a story of the nation. Selfmade, rags to riches, the story of america, a spectacle for all the world to see. In that story he left his sister out. Never once did he so much as mention her. Where does that leave her unfortunate biographer . One half the world is not the other the other half lives, franklin once wrote. His sister i think is his other half. And if his life is an allegory, so is hers. But an allegory for what . Her life was not a spectacle. None of you have ever heard of her before but its difficult even to see her life next to his, her life seem so tiny. His famous matched only by her obscurity. If he is a spectacle, she is a. But i wanted in my to be a kind of eyeglasses that could help us see both at once . No portrait of jane survives like this iconic portrait of franklin. She cant be seen in that way. There are dozens of portraits of her brother. His popularity he wrote to her has occasioned so many paintings to be mr. Tipping that my face is almost as wellknown as that of the moon. She wrote back, yeah, and its just as changeable. The liked very much to be portrayed wearing his spectacles. They were kind of a trademark for him. The historian found that he is wearing his spectacles more than a third of all the surviving poachers but this is the case when theres almost no other 18th century portraits of anyone wearing eyeglasses but its a quite unusual thing. Franklin like this portrait the best. Why does he care so much about being seen wearing spectacles . The story of spectacles in early america is a story about reading. Spectacles were an emblem of the life of the mind. Eyeglasses, pieces of glass cut in thin to be held up before your eyes became common commodities not until well into the 17th century when they were used exclusively for reading. If you were literate you might have eyeglasses but you never would have eyeglasses if you are not literate. Arise if eyeglasses have actually inseparable from the rise of printing and expansion of literacy. People used spectacles to read printed books. You can see the first popular advertising for spectacles from london. This is what eyeglasses looked like and how they risked. These are called no spectacles are rich spectacles. They said on the bridge of your nose. This is a great portrait from early new england in 1670 holding the many sane. You can see they are very tiny. But theyre always in his portraits associate with books because the whole point of having spectacles was in order to read a book. But the very fact the existence of spectacles even though not many people have them, they only use them for reading, an age of isaac newtons optics actually inspired all kinds of different thinking about seeing and the act of site. Things and ideas about perspective and point of view and distortion. Said john donne france is absurd when thou lucas for spectacles, small things seem great. Spectacles made small things bigger. Wearing them, think about them also inspired reflection on the nature and the boundaries of the self and of moral imagination. If you could see through another mans eyes the way you can look through a pair of glasses. Richard steele writing in in 1711 that a mans eyes are spectacles to those who look at him to read his hard. You could see through the eyes into the hard. Wearing spectacles then was not a small thing for benjamin frankel. It marked him as a man of discernment. More plainly they marked him as a prodigious reader which he was. Jane always said when he was a young child he had learned to read, and get studied incessantly and was addicted to reading. Their father was a poor candle maker but he decided to send been since benny to school. They decide to give one of his sons to the church. That mentoring him to go to harvard by teaching in latin and greek. So in 1714 when jenny was due in benny was eight he entered school, a Grammar School and studied latin and greek in order to prepare for the ministry. Franklin spent only two years there before his father pulled him out and sent into a cheap as coal and then pulled him out of that School Effort to keep them at home to help make candles. Franklin hated it. Jimmys parents could not have sent her to school at all even if they had a mind to. No Public School in 18th century boston admitted girls. Beginning in 1701, messages required families ought to teach boys to read and to write, and girls to read. Girls were not commonly to write in 18th century. They were taught instead to stage. Three in five women could not even find the name. When you think about it, knowing had assigned him does not indicate liturgy, its a mechanical act. Most of those women who kids find the names could not ask the right. A boston newspaper printed a dialogue between a man and his wife about the education of the daughter they give a glimpse of the 18th century ideas about women. The mother wishes to send her dog to school husband refuses telling her pretty good competitors be able to read a chapter to it in the bible that she made mispronounce gods people. Maker expert and ready after prayers that god may keep her from the devil. Teacher with useful. I tell the wife once were ill have her this is Jane Franklins education at she was bred for needle and thread. She cut the wake and get the candles, the work that her brother hated. She boiled so. Why on earth did Benjamin Franklin one day need to send are spectacles . Girls never learned to read or buy. They learn to read that not right. Why do Jane Franklin one day need glasses . Jane franklin did learn to read because most of them do. She was no ordinary reader. She read passionately. She read avidly. She learned how to write which is quite an unusual thing. I think our brother taught her. Benjamin franklin from boyhood fought for his learning letter by letter, book by book, candle by candle back he valued nothing more and he let no one better than his little sister. But it was cool in his kindness because when he left, the lessons ended. In 1717 when she was five, her brother james set up a printing shop in boston. It was a godsend for Benjamin Franklin because he at last was a trade for a bookish boy whose family was too poor to send him to harvard. He began his brothers apprentice and he moved out of the house into a room above his brothers shot. He was 12, ginny was six. Being a printers apprentice gave him all kinds opportunity to read. It was the best part. He read every book that passed through the shop. He also read books a part from a friend of his named john collins. He sat up reading all night long. He and his friend john like to trade books and altavista stage debates as if they were university men. They used to pretend they were harvard students. The only debate to remember what enough to write about in his autolock if he was a he had with his friend over the propriety of educating the female sex and learning, and about the ability for study. Collins was of the opinion it was improper and the girls were unequal to it. Franklin disagreed. He took a contrary side, maybe he was thinking of jane. In crafting his argument franklin lane on the book written by essays on projects. The establishment of an academy for women right ive often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world considered as civilized and Christian Country that would unite the attendees of learning to women. Their use is spent to teach them to stitch and so or make bottles. Are taught to read and maybe to write their names, and that is the height of a womans education. He proposed an academy for women that would hold back such as geniuses would leave him to it. This is the argument Benjamin Franklin as a young boy made in this debate with his best friend. Hollowing the foes argue about the need for womens education. Franklin lost the argument. He had carried on a lot of the argument by writing. Franklin learned a great lessons about how to write and how to argue in the course of that debate but think about what that means. When Benjamin Franklin was improving pros, arguing about the education of girls come his sister jane was at some making candles and stitching. Quietly though what time she gets. She seems to have been doing more. She once wrote to her brother, i read as much as i dare. In 1721 jayme and danny brothers jane bought his first spectacles. What you want to do was right for business day. In his brother would never let him so he disguised his inviting and cadence of a pending and he slipped the contribution under the newspapers door. Opinionated and that was of course silence do good. She introduced herself i wake of remarks about the art of biography. This is why the seldom entertaining contain something admiral or exemplary. Says theres little o or nothing of this nature, and adventures but will briefly and then see worst possible. According to the promise can find all to this letter. Doesnt this make you want to go read 18th century stuff . This is awesome. Franklin wrote in the voice of mrs. Silence do good, a widow. A woman. Shed to explain because she now divides hatch came by her education. The person says is what makes plenty how it is likely a woman writer because it seems an impossibility her story was that her father and mother had died and she had been given as a charge to minister to a very liberal views about education. She had spent her childhood with the best of companies, books. So then about this from now, disguised as a woman whose girlhood was spent reading books, silenced a good was Jane Franklin. Benjamin franklin ran away from home in 1723. He was 17. Chain was 11. She was a reader, she some inspired Silence Dogood was she a writer . Virginia woolf once asked what wouldve happened if one shakespeshakespe are had a wonderful gifted sister . Lets imagine her name is judith. Wolf gave herself permission to invent judith shakespeare. She conjured a girl as brave and daring as her brother. She was as adventures as imagined as i cant of virginia wolf accident or else i would. Imagine Virginia Woolf. She was not sent to school. Had no chance of learning grammar and logic. Thats like bad she picked up the book now within. Whenever brothers maps and read a few pages but then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings are mine is due. This is a thought experiment of woolf. What wouldve happened . Before she was out of 13 just to be betrothed with a neighboring state. Like what does it will stay for even do . She cried out that marriage is hateful to her and for that she was severely beaten up by her father. He would give her a chain of beads and there were tears in his eyes. How could she disobey him . How could she break his heart . In this fiction get its shaker does break her fathers are. She runs away and becomes an actress. Then she is seduced by a Theater Company manager. Shes made with child by him and then woolf writes, who shall measure the heat and violence of the poets heart and taught him to any womans body . She kills herself one winters night. Thats what happens to judith shakespeare. A question you might ask, is this whats going to happen to Jane Franklin . Judith shakespeare is of course virginia was imagination. Solitary and unencumbered. A free man. Judith shakespeare killed herself because she was pregnant, because she could not reconcile a life of the mind of the artist with a life of a mother. Neither could Virginia Woolf. The facts of Jane Franklins life are very hard to come by. Most of what she wrote is lost in what scant record of her life is record exists only because she was Benjamin Franklins record. Jane franklin is not a figment of my imagination. She was flesh and blood and milk into to her brother ran away and broke their fathers or. She would not. She could not. She didnt kill herself one winters night. She never gave herself that kind of broke either. She had too many people to look after. She never left anyone behind. Her whole life charlie of her left the house. She didn didnt have a room ofr own until she was 69. I right now in my own Little Chamber nobody announced to distribute, she wrote, delighted. She was very happy to have that room, but not having isnt isnt why she didnt write more or better. In 1723 after Benjamin Franklin ran away and settled here in philadelphia, where he opened a printing shop like his brother, a revolution in eyewear began. When this kind of eyeglasses, he called it temple spectacles were invented. Franklin start selling these kind of spectacles at his shop in philadelphia in 1730 when he was 24 which is also when he began rank them. The same age his brother needed to wear glasses. At first if of only one of them for reading like most other people did but before he started wearing them costly. He would walk up and down the Market Street when his eyeglasses and people would laugh, dont you know theyre only for reading . But he would use a different era when h used outside just legacy distance because he realized he had two kinds of problems with his site. Not long after you begin with spectacles, Benjamin Franklin of course invented life vocals. He explained i had two forms of spectacles which i should did occasionally but i sometimes read and often want to regard the prospect. I was having to take off when the glasses. You know how troublesome not having my other sufficiently ready instead of the glasses cut in half of each can associate in the same circle. I this means i have only to move my eyes upward and as i want to see distinctly, far or near. Its almost as if franklin left for me a little clue like the code explaining how to write a biography of two people were very different, like a binocular biography. I think this is a lesson here in the writing of history. Few peoples eyes are valid. Franklin wrote to his sister that day he centers but to go to our eyes look alike but they see differently he told her. Almost everybody in reading uses when i principally. One i might be used for eyesight. One day you might need to see far, one day you might need to senior. She needed two different lenses because she had two different eyes. Thats trying i think needs to different lenses. Want to see up close and what is he far away. One to write a life of