The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Mémoires de la vie privée de Benjamin Franklin)

The true first is the French Buisson edition of 1791, and the census is correct: there is no earlier English printing, and this is one of the classic cases of an American author's masterwork appearing first in translation. The first English-language appearance is 'The Private Life of the Late Benjamin Franklin, LL.D.... Originally written by himself, and now translated from the French' (London: printed for J. Parsons, 1793) — not Franklin's English, but a retranslation of Gibelin's French back into English, credited to Alexander Stevens; the first American edition (1794) descends from the same retranslated text. A collection that wants both the original-language first and the first in English takes the 1791 Buisson and the 1793 Parsons. A third landmark is separate again: John Bigelow's edition (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1868), set from Franklin's own holograph manuscript, is the first appearance of the authentic English text, the first English publication of all four parts, and the first printing of the 'outline.' William Temple Franklin's 1818 edition and every English printing before 1868 carry the corrupted retranslated text.