GoKawiilSmithsonian essay traces how Benjamin Franklin used pseudonyms to speak freely
A Smithsonian magazine special report examines how Benjamin Franklin repeatedly invented fictional authorial personas—such as the widow Silence Dogood and the unwed mother Polly Baker—to publish opinions he couldn't voice under his own name. As a teenager, Franklin used the Dogood persona to sneak past his brother's ban on printing his writing, while Polly Baker's fictional courtroom defense skewered unequal treatment of unmarried mothers versus the men who fathered their children.