 | Ellen Cohn, editor-in-chief of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, stands with a bust of the famous American statesman, inventor and scientist. |
Collection in the spotlight during tercentennial celebrations
In a year marking the anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin, it is no surprise that Ellen Cohn, current editor-in-chief of the historic Yale project known as The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, has been doing some celebratory traveling.
Cohn has been an invited guest at events both in the United States and abroad to mark the tercentennial of the American statesman, scientist, inventor and author, who was born on Jan. 17, 1706.
These events have included a White House dinner hosted by President George Bush, a gala in Philadelphia on Franklin's birthday to launch a major exhibition at the National Constitution Center, and a celebration on July 4 in France sponsored by French President Jacques Chirac as well as directors of all the major intellectual and cultural institutions in Paris.
"In this current flurry of Franklin celebrations, exhibitions, new biographies, television documentaries, specialized studies, concerts, lectures and symposia, I am very pleased that The Papers of Benjamin Franklin -- which is ultimately the foundation for all of them -- is being recognized by the United States and French governments for its enduring value," Cohn says. (Yale will celebrate Franklin as part of Constitution Day on Sept. 18; see related story.)
In fact, the Benjamin Franklin Collection, housed in Sterling Memorial Library, is the single most extensive assemblage of materials by and about Franklin anywhere in the world. Assembled in the early 20th century by William Smith Mason (Yale Class of 1888 at the Sheffield Scientific School), the collection was originally housed in Mason's home in Evanston, Illinois, where he retained a personal librarian to assist him in cataloguing and keeping track of all the material he had acquired. When he donated the Franklin Collection to Yale in 1935, it was hailed as the largest and most valuable gift ever made to the Yale Library, and was acknowledged as one of the finest collections ever assembled around an individual. Recently, his grandson, Mason Willrich (Yale Class of 1954), encouraged his own former Yale classmates to provide significant financial support to the Franklin Papers, ensuring their future at the University.
The collection's books and pamphlets include Franklin imprints, books from his personal library, works by his contemporaries and complete runs of many 18th-century periodicals. The collection also contains important manuscripts (now housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library), broadsides, maps, coins, busts, paintings and an extensive print collection (which is partially displayed along the walls of library offices and in the second-floor corridor). A 1782 oil portrait of Franklin painted in Paris by Joseph Wright is on permanent display in the Yale University Art Gallery.
In 1954, Yale decided to launch an ambitious undertaking: to assemble a team of scholars to edit and publish a comprehensive edition of all of Franklin's papers, and to house that project in Sterling Library's Franklin Collection.
Under the direction of the first editor-in-chief, Leonard Labaree, the team's search for documents took five years and yielded nearly 30,000 items from all over the United States, England and Europe, including every known letter that Franklin wrote and received. When originals couldn't be obtained, photostat copies were sent to Yale, where they were sorted and catalogued.
The publishing effort is still in progress. The 38th volume in the series will be published by the Yale University Press this fall, and the current team of scholars working on the project expects that nine more volumes will be necessary to complete the task.
Because Franklin corresponded with a huge range of men and women on a wide variety of topics, his papers provide a nearly encyclopedic view of the 18th century. The papers themselves, as well as the scholarly annotations that illuminate them, provide a gold mine of information for historians of science, technology, printing, literature, and of social life in America, England and France, as well as for scholars of colonial politics and the creation of the United States.
Franklin, who was born in Boston, is legendary for his contributions as a statesman and for a myriad of wide-ranging accomplishments. In the course of his life, he was also a printer and publisher, an educator, a postmaster and a philosopher. His inventions include the Franklin stove, bifocals, swim fins, the odometer, the flexible catheter and the lightning rod. His leadership helped establish the first lending library (1731), the first scholarly association (the American Philosophical Society), the first hospital, the first fire insurance company and Philadelphia's first firefighting company.
In addition, Franklin was the founder and first president of the Philadelphia Academy, now known as the University of Pennsylvania. As a writer and printer, he published "Poor Richard's Almanack" from 1733 to 1758. He conducted pioneering research on electricity and produced the first chart of the Gulf Stream, which he deduced from changes in the color and temperature of the water between North America and Europe during his eight Atlantic crossings.
His statesmanship was critical to the formation of the new U.S. nation, as he helped draft the Declaration of Independence and served as American ambassador to France, securing political support for the American Revolution as well as crucial military supplies and financial backing. He initiated peace negotiations with England and helped draft the treaty that ended the war in 1782. At 81 years old, Franklin served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and signed the Constitution in 1787. Although he had owned slaves earlier in his life, one of Franklin's last public acts was to write an anti-slavery treatise in 1789. He was an international celebrity at the time of his death in Philadelphia in 1790.
Today, Yale's multi-volume The Papers of Benjamin Franklin is also renowned around the world as a scholarly achievement. An American reviewer said of the edition, "Its subject is important; its coverage is breathtakingly comprehensive; its editorial protocols are of the highest quality; its annotations are erudite and insightful; its indexing is very useful. ... This is the gold standard in scholarly editing, and a genuine ornament of American letters." Bruce Cole, chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has called the Franklin Papers a model for all editorial projects.
Cohn, who has worked at the Franklin Papers for 27 years, is the fifth editor-in-chief. Previous chief editors, after Labaree, were William B. Willcox, Claude-Anne Lopez and Barbara Oberg. Members of the current Franklin team are Jonathan Dull, Karen Duval, Kate Ohno, Michael Sletcher, Philipp Ziesche, Alicia Anderson and Elizabeth Morris. Together, this team represents 95 years of collective experience in dating undated documents, identifying handwriting, deciphering nearly illegible manuscripts and illuminating all the historical incidents and people mentioned in Franklin's correspondence.
In a letter congratulating Cohn and her colleagues, President Richard C. Levin wrote, "Yale is lucky indeed to have the Franklin Papers. And we are equally lucky in the scholarly stewardship of those connected with the papers for helping us serve the nation and the world in such an important way."
Says Yale University Librarian Alice Prochaska: "I am so proud that Yale University Library houses this magnificent project, a monument to one of the key figures in all the history of the United States. The collection on which it is founded is an asset for modern scholars and will be preserved by the library for generations of scholars and students to come. The project's staff, led by Ellen Cohn, is doing a wonderful job of promoting and assisting the study of Benjamin Franklin and his era. It is most fitting that Ellen should occupy a place of honor in the highest level of celebrations on both sides of the Atlantic."
At the White House ceremony in the spring, Cohn was among some 60 people commemorating Franklin. Guests included the heads of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Historical Public Records Commission, as well as the postmaster general of the United States, congressmen and senators, and two noted Franklin biographers.
Cohn sat at First Lady Laura Bush's table, and was able to view at the affair several artifacts from a major exhibit organized by the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary Commission that is traveling around the country. These include a tankard once owned by Franklin, a copy of the U.S. Constitution with Franklin's handwritten annotations and a 1733 edition of "Poor Richard's Almanack."
For the Yale editor, a highlight was the chance to see the first 37 volumes of Yale's Franklin Papers in the White House Library.
"President Bush was interested to hear that our next volume chronicles the final peace negotiations that ended the American Revolution," Cohn says. "At dinner, he toasted those of us who devote our lives to researching history."
In conjunction with the 300th birthday celebration and the traveling Franklin exhibit, the Yale University Press released "Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World," edited by Page Talbott, associate director of the Tercentenary Commission and chief curator of the traveling exhibition (which bears the same name as the book). The volume includes 10 essays by prominent scholars, including one by Cohn and one by Edmund Morgan, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History at Yale. Together, the essays offer an overview of Franklin's life and cover the full range of his interests and achievements.
Cohn's essay, "The Printer at Passy," presents recent original research that debunks a longstanding assumption about the printing press Franklin set up on the grounds of his residence in France. Historians had assumed that Franklin set up the press as a hobby. Cohn determined through her own sleuthing that Franklin's press was primarily a diplomatic tool, and that he was having type made for him in a hitherto-unknown type foundry that operated for two years on the grounds of his estate. Franklin used his press, she says, to create an authoritative image for the United States, printing passports, legal forms and extraordinary financial certificates to present to the royal treasury at Versailles. As the peace was being negotiated, he even printed two books of political philosophy that tested the limits of press freedom in France, says Cohn.
"Franklin did not buy a printing press in order to escape from work;" she writes, "he established a press to help him do it."
The main body of the Franklin collection is open to the Yale community and to visiting scholars for research and study, Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. For further information, call (203) 432-1814.
-- By Gila Reinstein
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