The Collection of Franklin Imprints in the Museum of the
Curtis Publishing Company. By W. J. Campbell. (Philadelphia : Curtis Publishing Company.)—In this handsome volume, printed in a fine and bold type recalling the eighteenth-century style, Dr. Campbell, the President of the Philadelphia City History Society, has described the collection of books and papers Printed by Benjamin Franklin which is preserved in the museum of the Curtis Publishing Company, the publishers of the Saturday Evening Post. American collectors have naturally paid much attention to the work of Franklin, who was a good printer as well as an able journalist and statesman, and the Curtis collection is one of the most complete in existence. Dr. Campbell's summary list of Franklin•imprints contains seven hundred and ninety items, counting as one his Pennsylvania Gazette, of which the Saturday Evening Post is the direct descendant. Nearly all the important items are in the Curtis collection—notably twelve out of the fourteen Indian Treaties, some of them annotated by Franklin for Lord Shelburne's benefit, and all but four of the thirty-four issues of Poor Richard's Almanac, the most popular of all Franklin's writings. Dr. Campbell gives an interesting account of Franklin's career as printer and publisher, from his 'prentice days at Boston in 1718 to his old age when, as Minister in Paris during the American Revolution, he set up a private press at Passy and printed some little essays and an ingenious forgery of a Boston paper containing imaginary British advertisements for American scalps. The book, which is issued in a limited edition, is a very valuable supple- ment to the biography of Philadelphia's greatest citizen, who through most of his long life was a British subject.
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