ABSTRACT
Edward Ward was one of those early professional writers who managed to fashion a career as a journalist, poet, and pamphleteer without the benefit of patronage, and so influenced the development of a new literature in England that was driven more by the realities of the market than the ideals of art. Ward's literary and cultural acumen is in evidence as this small, affordable pamphlet capitalised on the reading public's penchant for travel narratives and fascination with the exotic. Ward completed eighteen installments, finally bringing the venture to a close in May 1700. The London Spy was so popular that his subsequent writings over the next decade were advertised with the tide-page phrase 'By the Author of the London Spy'. Ward began issuing his most ambitious political poem, Hndojras Redirirus, in serial forth in August 1705. Ward's contemporary biographers often noted that he was a man of 'low extraction' who did not have the benefit of formal education.
