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.

chapter |22 pages

Introduction

The rise of the periodical

chapter 1|26 pages

‘Censor-General of Great Britain’

The Tatler and the editor as social monitor

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 6|17 pages

Polite, genteel, elegant

The Female Spectator and the editor's pretensions to gentility

chapter 7|25 pages

‘Writing like a teacher’

Johnson as moralist in the Rambler

chapter 8|13 pages

‘A becoming sensibility’

The Old Maid and the sentimental periodical

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