“Magisterial,” is the word J.A. Leo Lemay’s publishers proffer for his seven-volume biography of Benjamin Franklin (University of Pennsylvania Press). Certainly the first two volumes fully justify the term. I cannot imagine a more authoritative work than this one, based on a lifetime of scholarship.

Publishers these days – even university presses – shy away from the multivolume biography that used to be accorded the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Robert E. Lee. Collections of primary documents (“the papers of”) continue to be published, but the trend now is toward the stylish one-volume life of the Joseph J. Ellis variety or the biography of an episode such as Stacy Schiff’s “A Great Improvisation.”

This preference for the partial biography and the short narrative reflects, in part, the doubt that much new material can be added to a full-length work, whereas dwelling on the highlights or focusing on only one period may yield fresh insights.

The economics of publishing also plays a part, since most second volumes of a biography (not to mention a third or a fourth) do not sell nearly as well as the first. Some of the complaints about bulky one-volume biographies are misguided, in a sense, because in an earlier age, those same books would have been halved into two volumes.

A seven-volume biography may conjure up visions of tedious detail, but such is not the case, for two reasons: Mr. Lemay’s prose is well-paced, and he intrigues even seasoned students of Franklin with new details and – even better – “new attributions,” delightful additions to the Franklin canon that include public letters, essays, satires, and speeches.

In Mr. Lemay’s volumes, Franklin emerges more than ever as the first major American author. The writings of Franklin, a prolific controversialist who often wrote under pseudonyms, anticipated those of Poe and Twain. Franklin’s literary genius has not been acclaimed more often because he failed to keep any orderly record of his contributions to newspapers and periodicals.

As Mr. Lemay points out, Franklin did not write for fame. He never had it in mind to establish a literary career. And so his oeuvre, like those of other writers who did not make an industry of collecting and republishing their work, has been slighted.

One of the new attributions is “A Speech Delivered by an Indian Chief in Reply to a Sermon by a Swedish Missionary.” Franklin based his work on an actual speech but, as Mr. Lemay shows, aimed to attack Christian missionaries who presumed they had a preserve on the word of God.

The Indian points out that his people believe God has communicated with different races in different manners. Why would revelation be accorded to some and not others? the Indian asks. To say that God has not revealed himself equally to all peoples is to deny his omnipotence. What need, really, is there for mediators like priests and ministers? To the Indian the idea of a God who plays favorites is whimsical indeed.

The Indian sounds like a Deist, Mr. Lemay points out, because Franklin delivers this speech suited up as an aboriginal. Franklin delighted in disparaging the clergy and often got in trouble for it. He was hardly an anti-religious man, however, counting among his great friends George Whitefield, one of the leading lights of the Great Awakening. Religion could do much good, Franklin believed, but the actions of zealots required rebuke.

One of the great pleasures of these two volumes is watching Benjamin Franklin get himself into one jam after another. Mr. Lemay has a genius for recreating Franklin de novo, as if Franklin’s life has yet to be lived. Given all that has been written about Franklin, including several recent good books, this is an extraordinary achievement.

Volume 1 begins with a prologue, titled “Quandary,” that demonstrates what a failure Franklin had become early in his career, especially after running away from his brother James:

Franklin realized that his brother had told every local printer that Franklin was really still apprenticed to him. No Boston printer would hire him. … Worse, he had become notorious in Boston as an infidel. He enjoyed arguing and practiced a Socratic method of asking questions and having his opponents agree with statements that gradually led them to conclusions that they had not foreseen. … Moreover, he was infamous as a radical, whose newspaper writings insulted the best-known ministers of Boston, Cotton and Increase Mather, and who satirized the old, greatly respected chief justice, Samuel Sewall. … Some parents told their children to have nothing to do with him. How did he find himself in this predicament, and how did he make such a mess of his life by age seventeen? And what could he do?

Here is another example (culled from Volume 2) of Franklin appearing afresh:

What was wrong with Benjamin Franklin? Philadelphia’s eligible young women refused his courtship overtures in 1728, 1729, and early 1730. His failure makes no sense. … Since he was an eligible bachelor, his difficulties are surprising. He was healthy, hardworking, intelligent, honest, attractive, charming, friendly, and highly respected. He was a promising suitable young bachelor. … His future should have been bright to prospective brides and prospective in-laws. Why did it not? When telling of his courtships in his ‘Autobiography,’ Franklin concealed the reason for his rejections.

The redundancy of this paragraph, with its dwelling on “eligible,” “promising,” and “suitable,” fortifies the mystery, the secret that dare not speak its name, the scandal that erupts in Mr. Lemay’s next sentences:

He was most likely rejected because he had an illegitimate son, born probably in 1728, for whom he was caring. The existence of an illegitimate son and Franklin’s expectation that his future wife would help raise him explain why Franklin was not considered a highly eligible bachelor.

So who was the mother? Ah, that becomes quite a fascinating story in Mr. Lemay’s telling, especially since he shows how the speculations of previous biographers have probably gone awry. Mr. Lemay builds a nice sense of suspense in approaching this question, and I see no reason why I should spoil it.

Mr. Lemay, in other words, is, like his subject, a bit of a tease – and this is not a bad attitude to adopt in order to hold on to readers through a seven-volume epic. The biographer is fortunate that Franklin the journalist (crime reporter, satirist, and essayist), Franklin the scientist and inventor (don’t forget that wonderful stove, not to mention the lightning rod), Franklin the printer, postmaster, businessman, and diplomat, is so multifaceted.

But the job of entertainment does not fall to Franklin alone. Each volume ends with a wrap-up, a brisk yet comprehensive survey. “The irrepressible pride that got Franklin into trouble in Boston continued during his late teens and early adulthood in Philadelphia and London,” Mr. Lemay writes in assessing his subject from 17 to 24. “Unlike his great contemporaries Jonathan Evans, George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, Franklin often mocked himself,” the biographer notes, ending Volume 1. Similarly, in Volume 2 Mr. Lemay observes that like “Jonathan Swift and other satirists, Franklin observed his own pride, pretensions, and frailties with some scorn.”

Under Mr. Lemay’s narrative spell, Franklin emerges as the greatest of Americans – and certainly among the greatest of human beings. It takes an awesome biography to do justice to such a man, and that is exactly what Mr. Lemay is writing.

crollyson@nysun.com