It dared criticize, even poke fun at authority, especially the politics of Puritan leaders Increase and Cotton Mather, whose supporters fired back at the
Courant in other Boston papers and in a broadside called the
Anti-Courant.
Ben Franklin's earliest newspaper copy was published in the Courant. Like James, Benjamin had read and studied the clever, urbane style of the English essayists Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, and others, an influence that showed clearly in the "Silence Dogood Papers," a series of fourteen satirical essays he wrote in the guise of Mrs. Silence Dogood, a minister's widow. Franklin's initial aim was to spoof Cotton Mather's "Essays To Do Good"; later the apprentice printer aimed his satire at Harvard College. These essays were left anonymously on the Courant's doorstep; even James did not know the identity of their author. When James finally discovered their authorship, he began to envy his apprentice's talents, which led to strained relations between the two brothers, and at length to Benjamin's fleeing, at age eighteen, the remaining term of his apprenticeship and sailing to New York, and then later to Philadelphia, where he found work with printer Samuel Keimer.
This is a free page. This page contains 187 words. This
biography contains 1,843 words (approx. 6 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Benjamin Franklin Access Pass.
