Biography of benjamin franklins sister

Ben Franklin's sister Jane, barely literate, all but lost to history, has a story as instructive as any maxim her favorite brother wrote.

Jill Lepore opens a smeared casement on the life of Jane, Benjamin Franklin's gifted sister, confidante and life-long correspondent. While Benjamin was able to forge a path to greatness from his obscure beginnings, Jane, trapped by gender, starved of education, was not.

A revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin's youngest sister and a history of history itself.

Jane Franklin spent very little of her life with her now-famous last name. She became Jane Mecom at fifteen, married to an unremarkable and increasingly troublesome saddler of twenty-two, Edward Mecom, who simply moved himself into the Franklin home and began attempting, unsuccessfully, to find himself a job.

She was a voracious reader, a savvy political thinker, and a talented writer, just like her brother—but Jane Franklin was also the mother of 12.

From one of our most accomplished and widely admired historians, a revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin’s youngest sister and a history of history itself. Like her brother, Jane Franklin was a passionate reader, a gifted writer, and an astonishingly shrewd political commentator.