ABSTRACT
Recent years have witnessed a heightened interest in eighteenth-century literary journalism and popular culture. This book provides an account of the early periodical as a literary genre and traces the development of journalism from the 1690s to the 1760s, covering a range of publications by both well-known and obscure writers. The book's central theme is the struggle of eighteenth-century journalists to attain literary respectability and the strategies by which editors sought to improve the literary and social status of their publications.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter 2|17 pages
‘The Conversation of my Drawing-Room’
The female editor and the public sphere in the Female Tatler
chapter 3|27 pages
‘In Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-Tables, and in Coffee-Houses’
The Spectator and the shift from the editorial club to the club of correspondents
chapter 4|17 pages
‘Faction and Nonsense’
The rivalry between Common Sense and the Nonsense of Common Sense
chapter 5|13 pages
Inventor or Plagiarist? Edward Cave and the first magazine
chapter 6|17 pages
Polite, genteel, elegant
The Female Spectator and the editor's pretensions to gentility
chapter 9|28 pages
‘Studies proper for women’
The Lady's Museum and the periodical as an educational tool
chapter 10|17 pages
‘Buried among the essays upon liberty, eastern tales, and cures for the bite of a mad dog’
Oliver Goldsmith and the essayist in the age of magazines