Benjamin Franklin created fictional middle-aged woman persona at age 16 to bypass brother's censorship

What was said

"When I got to Ben Franklin, who at the age of 16, this 16-year-old guy who creates this persona of this woman who's 40 years old and had all the tragic and melodramatic experiences that, you know, she lost a husband in a storm at sea, he was washed overboard and all this stuff. And I thought, if he could pull that off and make people believe it, I could never do that."

Franklin biographer HW Brands describes how teenage Benjamin Franklin invented the character 'Silence Dogood,' a middle-aged widow, to contribute to his brother's newspaper after being forbidden to write under his own name. The deception was so convincing that his brother James publicly praised the mysterious contributor, unaware it was his apprentice sweeping the floor. This early display of Franklin's creative genius left even his biographer in awe.