How to Become Famous

EPILOGUE

“Placed in Favourable Situations”

Recall Jane Franklin’s heartbreaking words to her brother Benjamin, lamenting the “Thousands of Boyles Clarks and Newtons” who “have Probably been lost to the world, and lived and died in Ignorans and meanness, merely for want of being Placed in favourable situations, and Injoying Proper Advantages.”1 Who is placed in unfavorable situations? Who faces disadvantages?

We might speak of an absence of education; Franklin herself was not allowed proper schooling. We might speak of poverty or an absence of economic opportunity. We might speak of an absence of parental support. We might speak of discrimination. Or we might speak more specifically, and less systematically, about the absence of a mentor, a ...