The Tatler (1709)

The Tatler (1709) was a periodical founded in the early 18th century that shaped Georgian print culture and the development of the essay form. Launched in London, it connected readers across Westminster, Fleet Street, and coffeehouses such as Button's and Will's, influencing writers, politicians, and readers associated with the Court of Anne, the House of Commons, and the Royal Society. The paper's circulation and style intersected with contemporaries like the Spectator, the Guardian, and the London Gazette while engaging figures from the Whig and Tory circles.

Background and Founding

Richard Steele established the periodical amid the cultural milieu of Queen Anne's reign, drawing on networks that included Joseph Addison, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and John Churchill. The enterprise emerged from the same print economy that produced works by Daniel Defoe, Samuel Johnson, and Edmund Curll, and operated within licensing debates involving the Stationers' Company and the Press Act. Steele's connections extended to patrons such as Charles Montagu and institutions like Trinity College, Oxford, while competing with provincial printers in Bath and Bristol and metropolitan booksellers on Paternoster Row.

Publication History and Format

Issued thrice weekly from 1709, the paper adopted a single-sheet folio resembling broadsides circulated in Covent Garden and Westminster Hall. It used the persona of a fictional narrator to address readers at the Inns of Court, the Temple, and St. James's Street, mirroring formats seen in earlier pamphlets by Henry Fielding and later adapted by Walter Scott. Distribution relied on coffeehouse networks including Child's and Garraway's, and it influenced distribution practices used by the Edinburgh Evening Courant and the Belfast News-Letter.

Contents and Contributors

Content mixed essays, anecdotes, and moral reflections referencing public figures such as Robert Walpole, Anne, Queen of Great Britain, and Marlborough, as well as literary contemporaries like William Congreve, John Dryden, and Aphra Behn. Contributors and collaborators included Joseph Addison, Thomas Tickell, and other writers drawn from Oxford and Cambridge circles, alongside printers and publishers in Ludgate Hill and Cornhill. The periodical commented on theatrical productions at Drury Lane and Haymarket, on sermons delivered at St. Paul's Cathedral, and on exhibitions at the Royal Academy precursors, engaging artists and dramatists such as Colley Cibber and Susannah Centlivre.

Social and Cultural Impact

The paper transformed sociability in London coffeehouses and salons frequented by members of the Kit-Cat Club and the Scriblerus Club, shaping conversation among lawyers at Lincoln's Inn and merchants at the Royal Exchange. Its essays intersected with contemporaneous debates involving the South Sea Company, the Bank of England, and charitable institutions like St. Bartholomew's Hospital, while informing taste in portraiture by Sir Godfrey Kneller and social satire in prints by William Hogarth. The periodical influenced reading habits among residents of Grosvenor Square and Bloomsbury, and resonated in provincial cultural centers such as York and Norwich.

Political and Literary Influence

Politically, the paper engaged with Whig and Tory disputes evident in pamphlets by Bolingbroke and writings associated with the Hanoverian succession, affecting discourse within the House of Commons and the Court at Kensington Palace. Literarily, it helped codify the modern essay alongside works by Montaigne (as read in translation), influencing later essayists like Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt, and Thomas Carlyle. Its style intersected with satirical strands produced by Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, and its model was emulated by periodicals in Dublin and Edinburgh, including journals connected to Trinity College Dublin and the University of Edinburgh.

Reception and Legacy

Contemporaries and successors debated the paper's moralizing tone and urbanity, with responses from figures such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Daniel Defoe, and Henry Fielding. Its legacy persisted in later newspapers like The Times and in magazines modeled by John Murray and William Blackwood, shaping the development of periodicals, biography, and the novel in Britain and the Atlantic world. Modern scholarship on the paper appears alongside studies of Georgian culture, eighteenth-century print, and Restoration drama, informing collections held by the British Library, Bodleian Library, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. Category:1709 establishments in Great Britain