Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin

Summary (from the publisher): From one of our most accomplished and widely admired historians - a revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin's youngest sister, whose obscurity and poverty were matched only by her brother's fame and wealth but who, like him, was a passionate reader, a gifted writer, and an astonishingly shrewd political commentator.

It is a life that has never been examined before: that of the sister of one of the most remarkable men of their time, living unknown to the world at large, but a constant presence and influence in her brother's life through their correspondence (he wrote more letters to her than to anyone else). Making use of an astonishing cache of little-studied material, including documents, objects, and portraits only just discovered, Jill Lepore brings Jane Franklin to life in a way that illuminates not only this one extraordinary woman but an entire world. Lepore's life of Jane Franklin, with its strikingly original vantage on Benjamin Franklin, is at once a wholly different account of the founding and one of the great untold stories of American history and letters.

Review: I received an uncorrected proof copy of this novel as a giveaway on Goodreads.

This was such a well done biography. Unlike her very famous brother, Jane Franklin's tale is a "quiet story of a quiet life of quiet sorrow and quieter opinions" (267). Jill Lepore begins her story of Jane Franklin by recounting Virginia Woolf's famous question, "What would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith?" (XII). In Jane Franklin, we have a historical account of a female counterpart to a brilliant and famous American.

"Benjamin Franklin's sister Jane thought of her brother as her 'Second Self.' He was the youngest of ten sons; she was the youngest of seven daughters. Benny and Jenny, they were called, when they were little. No two people in their family were more alike. Their lives could have hardly have been more different" (XI). While Benjamin traveled through Europe and throughout America, his younger sister didn't leave home even after marriage but continued to live with her parents. While Franklin was off learning a trade and shaping the future of America, Jane was raising children. And continued to raise them. After giving birth to eleven of her own, Jane also raised many of her grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, since her offspring did not benefit from the longevity she was blessed with.

Learning about Jane is to also learn about Benjamin. He wrote more letters to her than to anyone else, and they remained close, despite only seeing each other in person about once every decade. Lepore takes us back to the family's roots to the first Jane, "Jane, the daughter of Thomas ffranklyne" in the 1500s (6).

Although Jane had a difficult life filled with the untimely deaths of her children and grandchildren, and marred by her husband's debts, hard work, and the Revolutionary War, she undoubtedly benefited from having such a famous brother. Benjamin looked after his sister, recognizing her care for their ailing parents by leaving her his monetary inheritance, remembering to send her books and supplies, and remembering her in his will. He also constantly assisted her sons and grandsons.

Although certainly not the norm for this biography, Lepore does extrapolate knowledge of Jane's marriage that I'm not convinced is fact. Jane married at the age of 15, far below the average age of marriage for her family, to a man with little prospects who constantly was in debt, leading to Jane having to scrounge for money and leading to evictions and the loss of seized possessions. Lepore argues that she must have been pregnant at the time of marriage, although no details of a miscarriage or child are known for the first two years of her marriage. Yet Lepore goes so far as to say, "She might have stared out across the water in the harbor and known that she had married a wastrel for naught" (54). Lepore heavily implies that it was a loveless marriage arguing, "She never once wrote anything about him expressing the least affection. She hardly ever wrote anything about him at all" (53). Yet Lepore also reveals that many of Jane's letters were destroyed and that the first letter of hers that survives was written when she was forty-five years old. A lot can happen between marriage at 15 and turning 45 years old. Although Lepore is likely right about Jane's marriage, it can only be conjecture without confirmation of Jane's feelings.

One of my favorite details about this book is that the title, Book of Ages, is taken from the title of the handmade book that Jane kept to chronicle the births and deaths of her loved ones. The swirling script font on the cover of Book of Ages is the handwriting that Jane used to inscribe the title in her own book, which has miraculously survived the ages to provide a glimpse into the world of a sibling that might have been famous, except for the fact that she was born a girl; "I find Litle very Litle, Equal to that I have a Right to by Nature but am deprived of by Provedence" (203).

Stars: 5