Franklin Benjamin Sanborn

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Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (December 15, 1831–February 24, 1917) was an American journalist, author, and reformer. Sanborn was a social scientist, and a memorialist of American transcendentalism who wrote early biographies of many of the movement's key figures. He founded the American Social Science Association, in 1865, "to treat wisely the great social problems of the day." He was a member of the Secret Six, or "Committee of Six," that funded the militant abolitionist John Brown.

Sanborn was born at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. He graduated Harvard in 1855. As secretary of the Massachusetts Kansas Commission he came into close touch with John Brown.

From 1863 to 1867 Sanborn was an editor of the Boston Commonwealth, from 1867 to 1897 of the Journal of Social Science, and from 1868 to 1914 a correspondent of the Springfield Republican.

He was one of the founders of, and was closely identified with, the American Social Science Association, the National Prison Association, the National Conference of Charities, the Clarke School for the Deaf, the Massachusetts Infant Asylum, and the Concord School of Philosophy.

From 1874 to 1876 he was chairman of the Massachusetts State Board of Charities, and from 1879 to 1888 State Inspector of Charities. He lectured at Cornell, Smith, and Wellesley, edited writings of Thoreau, Paul Jones, J. H. Payne, Mary Shelley, and Thomas Love Peacock, and also published a number of books.

[edit] Works

• Thoreau (1872)
• John Brown (1885)
• Dr. S. G. House (1891)
• A. Bronson Alcott: His Life and Philosophy (with William Torrey Harris) (1893)
• Emerson (1895)
• Dr. Earle (1898)
• Personality of Thoreau (1902)
• Personality of Emerson (1903)
• A History of New Hampshire (1904)
• Hawthorne (1908)
• Recollections of Seventy Years (1909)
• Final Life of Thoreau (1914)

[edit] External links

• The Significance of Being Frank, by Tom Foran Clark

• This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.