TY - JOUR AB - <p>While scholarship on Benjamin Franklin’s <em>Autobiography</em> describes his use of persona in nuanced terms, scholarship on Franklin’s earlier writings tends to characterize his use of persona as simply a device he used to eliminate personal details from his texts. This article, focused on Franklin’s Poor Richard persona, argues that he conceived of literary persona not simply as a tool to protect his anonymity, but also as a means of self-promotion and self-representation. Franklin used Poor Richard to make a space for himself in the literary marketplace, build a readership for the almanac, and create a positive public reputation for himself. Franklin’s early experiments in performing sincerity and authenticity through an invented personality prefigure the performances of identity he would deploy through his authorial persona in <em>The Autobiography</em>. Thus, by examining Franklin’s construction of identity in <em>Poor Richard’s Almanack</em>, we learn more about how he crafted a public identity for himself.</p> AU - Patricia F. Tarantello DA - 2016/6// DO - 10.21825/aj.v5i1.2353 IS - 1 VL - 5 PB - PY - 2016 TI - Persona-lly Appealing: Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard and Authorial Self-Representation T2 - Authorship UR - https://www.authorship.ugent.be/article/id/63927/ ER -