Ben Franklin, Printer’s Apprentice, Part 3 – Silence Dogood’s Success

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Benjamin Franklin Speaker, Christopher Lowell

Ben Franklin, Printers Apprentice, Part 3: Silence Dogood’s Success – Blog #7C

Good Citizens,

I deliberately left you hanging until today to finish the story of my letter to the “New England Courant.” My intent was to whet your appetite for more! I am happy to complete this little chapter for you now.
Well, in the morning (and if you are a bit lost, you should first refer to last week’s entry entitled “Ben Franklin, Printer’s Apprentice, Part 2”,) I stayed carefully in the back of the print shop as my brother and his friends opened my letter–the one signed “Silence Dogood,” and read it. Would they throw it into the fire? Put it aside? Even enjoy it? I waited with a much more casual demeanor than my beating heart belied.

Well, to my delight, they started chuckling and then even laughing! James declared it worthy of publication and all began to speculate as to who the real author might be. Of course, I kept my own “silence” and said nothing. Of course, I was exhilarated.

And indeed, my “Silence Dogood” letter was published forthwith. Readers loved it, so I wrote a second and delivered it the same way; carefully awaiting the darkness of a moonless night, then sliding the letter under the door of the print shop and running away.

The reception of this second letter mirrored that of the first. And my literary career, such as it was at the age of sixteen, was launched. Seeing the letter in print in my brother’s newspaper and having such a positive reaction from the readers was heady stuff indeed for me. I continued, of course, buoyed, yay, almost inebriated by this early triumph, and wrote a total of fourteen letters from “Silence” that year. And my anonymity continued. My brother never knew until many years later that it was I, his little brother, who was the author of those letters. I recall quite vividly that he did not receive the news with equanimity! Read more... (391 words, 1 image, estimated 1:34 mins reading time)

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Ben Franklin, Printers Apprentice, Part 2: Silence Dogood

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Benjamin Franklin Speaker, Christopher Lowell

Ben Franklin, Printers Apprentice, Part 2: Silence Dogood

Citizens, all,

In my last musings, I began the story of my days as a printer’s apprentice–a splendid trade for me because even young, I loved books and being around them.

As I indicated last week, I admired good prose and often ran off a sheet or two on the press from one of my favorite authors–men like Addison, Swift, and some of the Roman orators–and I’d “play” with this writing. For instance, I’d cut a page into sentences, put the pieces in a drawer for a few weeks, then take them out again and try to rearrange them in the “best” order. Or I’d try putting a few lines into poetry and then back into prose without looking at the original. It was here, in my brother’s shop, that I came to be curious as to whether I, myself, might write anything worthy of inclusion in my brother’s paper. There was an obvious problem though; James was ten years older than I and certainly not about to print anything in his paper that he knew came from his sixteen-year old brother, the apprentice! Those of you who have older brothers will readily understand my predicament. I solved this dilemma however.

I decided that I would disguise my identity behind the most unlikely persona I could imagine; that of a young Boston widow, whom I crowned with the absurd and patently false name of “Silence Dogood.” Silence, I decided, was a young widow with some strong opinions–opinions she wanted to share with the readers of the “New England Courant.” Although humorous and meant to please, my letter to the editor contained a few serious ideas, too. Not the least of these was that women should be educated and had as much to contribute to society by their brains as by their physical labor in the home. Apparently this idea is one you have accepted in your time but it was usually ridiculed in mine. Read more... (472 words, 1 image, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)

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The Origins of Benjamin Franklin’s Favorite Quotations

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Benjamin Franklin Speaker, Christopher Lowell

Citizens, I’m proud to be able to make use of your newest ways to communicate and begin here a series of discussions about my life and times. I was told, by my 21st century business manager, Mr. Christopher Lowell of Colorado Springs, that one of the topics that seem to interest a great number of you today is those little witticisms and aphorisms that I developed for my almanac, back when I was a young businessman in Philadelphia in the early 1730’s. So I’ll begin my chats with you by telling you how that all came about.

When I was 26 and had decided to write and publish an almanac for the citizens of Philadelphia, it was for for both altruistic and selfish reasons. I wanted to live usefully, and I’ll write in the future more about this. But I also wanted to make a profit, and use my skills, such as they were, in both writing and printing to do so. I knew I had a rival in Philadelphia, whose almanac was, although to my mind boring in the extreme, well established. His name was Titan Leeds, and I mulled how my almanac could stand out and be different from his. Read more... (707 words, estimated 2:50 mins reading time)

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