Poor Richard's Almanack (sometimes Almanac) was a yearly almanac published by Benjamin Franklin, who adopted the pseudonym of "Poor Richard" or "Richard Saunders" for this purpose. The publication appeared continually from 1732 to 1758. It sold exceptionally well for a pamphlet published in the Thirteen Colonies; print runs reached 10,000 per year.
Franklin, the American inventor, statesman, and accomplished publisher and printer, achieved success with Poor Richard's Almanack. Almanacks were very popular books in colonial America, offering a mixture of seasonal weather forecasts, practical household hints, puzzles, and other amusements. Poor Richard's Almanack was also popular for its extensive use of wordplay, and some of the witty phrases coined in the work survive in the contemporary American vernacular.
History
thumb|right|350px|A nineteenth-century print based on Poor Richard's Almanack, showing the author surrounded by twenty-four illustrations of many of his best-known sayings
On December 28, 1732, Benjamin Franklin announced in The Pennsylvania Gazette that he had just printed and published the first edition of The Poor Richard, by Richard Saunders, Philomath. Franklin published the first Poor Richard's Almanack on December 28, 1732, and continued to publish new editions for 25 years, bringing him much economic success and popularity. The almanack sold as many as 10,000 copies a year. In 1735, upon the death of Franklin's brother, James, Franklin sent 500 copies of Poor Richard's to his widow for free, so that she could make money selling them.
Cultural impact
King Louis XVI of France gave a ship to John Paul Jones who renamed it after the Almanack author—Bonhomme Richard, or "Goodman (that is, a polite title of address for a commoner who is not a member of the gentry) Richard" (the first of several US warships so named). The Almanack was translated into Italian, along with the Pennsylvania State Constitution (which Franklin helped draft) at the establishment of the Cisalpine Republic. It was also twice translated into French, reprinted in Great Britain in broadside for ease of posting, and was distributed by members of the clergy to poor parishioners. It was the first work of English literature to be translated into Slovene, translated in 1812 by Janez Nepomuk Primic (1785–1823).
The Almanack also had a strong cultural and economic impact in the years following publication. In Pennsylvania, changes in monetary policy in regard to foreign expenses were evident for years after the issuing of the Almanack. Later writers such as Noah Webster were inspired by the almanac, and it went on to influence other publications of this type such as the Old Farmer's Almanac.
Sociologist Max Weber considered Poor Richard's Almanack and Franklin to reflect the "spirit of capitalism" in a form of "classical" purity. This is why he filled the pages of Chapter 2 of his 1905 book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism with illustrative quotations from Franklin's almanacks.
Numerous farmer's almanacs trace their format and tradition to Poor Richard's Almanack; the Old Farmer's Almanac, for instance, has included a picture of Franklin on its cover since 1851.
In 1958, the United States mobilized its naval forces in response to an attack on Vice President Richard Nixon in Caracas, Venezuela. The operation was code-named "Poor Richard".
See also
- The Papers of Benjamin Franklin
Citations
Bibliography
See also: