Note 32 — Part I (continued 2)
Reading edition
Excellent note in Writings, II, 463-4. Abbé Raynal published Polly Baker in his Histoire ... as an authentic document. Also Peter Annet printed this jeu d'esprit in his Social Bliss (1749). See N. L. Torrey, Voltaire and the English Deists, 187. A. H. Smyth confesses: "The mystery surrounding the authorship and first publication of the 'Speech' remains an impenetrable mystery. The style is altogether Franklinian, and the story seems unquestionably to have been written by him, but I have searched The Pennsylvania Gazette in vain for it. It is not there."