"}[Benjamin] Franklin borrowed the name \u201cRichard Saunders\u201d from the seventeenth-century author of Rider\u2019s British Merlin,\n a popular London almanac which continued to be published throughout the\n eighteenth century. Franklin created the Poor Richard persona based in \npart on Jonathan Swift\u2019s pseudonymous character, \u201cIsaac Bickerstaff\u201d.\n In a series of three letters in 1708 and 1709, known as the Bickerstaff\n papers, \u201cBickerstaff\u201d predicted the imminent death of astrologer and \nalmanac maker John Partridge. Franklin\u2019s Poor Richard, like Bickerstaff, claimed to be a philomath and astrologer and, like Bickerstaff, predicted the deaths of actual astrologers who wrote traditional almanacs. In the early editions of Poor Richard\u2019s Almanack, predicting and falsely reporting the deaths of these astrologers\u2014much to their dismay\u2014was something of a running joke.\u00a0
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