Browsing by Date

Organization of Published Volumes

The Yale volumes follow the chronology of Franklin's life. Volumes 1 covers 1706-1734, Volume 2 covers 1735-44, and so forth.

This website includes additional documents not printed in the Yale volumes. We have inserted these into the Table of Contents at the appropriate dates.

Unpublished Volumes

The complete Papers of Benjamin Franklin will occupy 46 volumes. Thirty-seven are now published, reaching August of 1782.

For documents after this date, there is no page number in a published Yale volume for citation. We have organized these documents according to their expected eventual volume number and assigned arbitrary sequence numbers, but these numbers have no external validity. In citing unpublished documents, you should use the full name and date.

Please note that the Yale office has made some changes in their plan for dividing future volumes by date. Our website does not yet reflect these plans.

Franklin's Autobiography

We have divided the Autobiography into 18 sections of suitable length for display in a browser window. These divisions have no significance outside this website.