periodical essay definition

Periodical Essay Definition and Examples

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A periodical essay is an essay (that is, a short work of nonfiction) published in a magazine or journal--in particular, an essay that appears as part of a series.

The 18th century is considered the great age of the periodical essay in English. Notable periodical essayists of the 18th century include Joseph Addison, Richard Steele , Samuel Johnson , and Oliver Goldsmith .

Observations on the Periodical Essay

"The periodical essay in Samuel Johnson's view presented general knowledge appropriate for circulation in common talk. This accomplishment had only rarely been achieved in an earlier time and now was to contribute to political harmony by introducing 'subjects to which faction had produced no diversity of sentiment such as literature, morality and family life.'" (Marvin B. Becker, The Emergence of Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century . Indiana University Press, 1994)

The Expanded Reading Public and the Rise of the Periodical Essay

"The largely middle-class readership did not require a university education to get through the contents of periodicals and pamphlets written in a middle style and offering instruction to people with rising social expectations. Early eighteenth-century publishers and editors recognized the existence of such an audience and found the means for satisfying its taste. . . . [A] host of periodical writers, Addison and Sir Richard Steele outstanding among them, shaped their styles and contents to satisfy these readers' tastes and interests. Magazines--those medleys of borrowed and original material and open-invitations to reader participation in publication--struck what modern critics would term a distinctly middlebrow note in literature. "The most pronounced features of the magazine were its brevity of individual items and the variety of its contents. Consequently, the essay played a significant role in such periodicals, presenting commentary on politics, religion, and social matters among its many topics ." (Robert Donald Spector, Samuel Johnson and the Essay . Greenwood, 1997)

Characteristics of the 18th-Century Periodical Essay

"The formal properties of the periodical essay were largely defined through the practice of Joseph Addison and Steele in their two most widely read series, the "Tatler" (1709-1711) and the "Spectator" (1711-1712; 1714). Many characteristics of these two papers--the fictitious nominal proprietor, the group of fictitious contributors who offer advice and observations from their special viewpoints, the miscellaneous and constantly changing fields of discourse , the use of exemplary character sketches , letters to the editor from fictitious correspondents, and various other typical features--existed before Addison and Steele set to work, but these two wrote with such effectiveness and cultivated such attention in their readers that the writing in the Tatler and Spectator served as the models for periodical writing in the next seven or eight decades." (James R. Kuist, "Periodical Essay." The Encyclopedia of the Essay , edited by Tracy Chevalier. Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997)

The Evolution of the Periodical Essay in the 19th Century

"By 1800 the single-essay periodical had virtually disappeared, replaced by the serial essay published in magazines and journals. Yet in many respects, the work of the early-19th-century ' familiar essayists ' reinvigorated the Addisonian essay tradition, though emphasizing eclecticism, flexibility, and experientiality. Charles Lamb , in his serial Essays of Elia (published in the London Magazine during the 1820s), intensified the self-expressiveness of the experientialist essayistic voice . Thomas De Quincey 's periodical essays blended autobiography and literary criticism , and William Hazlitt sought in his periodical essays to combine 'the literary and the conversational.'" (Kathryn Shevelow, "Essay." Britain in the Hanoverian Age, 1714-1837 , ed. by Gerald Newman and Leslie Ellen Brown. Taylor & Francis, 1997)

Columnists and Contemporary Periodical Essays

"Writers of the popular periodical essay have in common both brevity and regularity; their essays are generally intended to fill a specific space in their publications, be it so many column inches on a feature or op-ed page or a page or two in a predictable location in a magazine. Unlike freelance essayists who can shape the article to serve the subject matter, the columnist more often shapes the subject matter to fit the restrictions of the column. In some ways this is inhibiting because it forces the writer to limit and omit material; in other ways, it is liberating, because it frees the writer from the need to worry about finding a form and lets him or her concentrate on the development of ideas." (Robert L. Root, Jr., Working at Writing: Columnists and Critics Composing . SIU Press, 1991)

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What Is a Periodical Essay?

Publication Date: 06 Mar 2019

A periodical essay is a type of writing that is issued on a regular basis as a part of a series in editions such as journals, magazines, newspapers or comic books. It is typically published daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly and is referenced by volume and issue.

Volume indicates the number of years when the publication took place while issue denotes how many times the periodical was issued during the year. For example, the May 1711 publication of a monthly journal that was first published in 1702 would be referred to as, “volume 10, issue 5”. At times, roman numerals were also used to indicate the volume number. For the citation of text in a periodical, such a format as The Chicago Manual of Style is used.

The periodical essay appeared in the early 1700s and reached its highest popularity in the middle of the eighteenth century. London magazines such as The Tatler and The Spectator were the most popular and influential periodicals of that time. It is considered that The Tatler introduced such literary genre as periodical essay while The Spectator improved it. The magazines remained influential even after they stopped publications. Their issues were later published in the form of a book, which was in demand for the rest of the century.

Richard Steele and Joseph Addison are considered to be the figures who contributed the most to the development of the eighteen-century literary genre of periodical essays. They managed to create a winning team where Addison was more of an eloquent writer while Steele made his contribution by being an outstanding organizer and editor.

Typically, the essays can be classified into such two types as popular and scholarly. Also, this literary form was written for an audience of professionals who preferred to read business, technical, academic, scientific and trade publications.

However, for the most part, the periodicals were about morality, emotions and manners. Readers expected essays to be common sense and thought-provoking. Publications were relatively short and mainly characterized as those which provide an opinion inspired by contemporary events. Periodicals were meant to be not “heavy”, especially those which were referred to as popular reading. The majority of topics in the periodicals were supposed to be appropriate for the common talk and general discussion.

Many essays were written for female readers as a target audience. Periodicals were aimed at middle-class people who were literate enough and could afford to buy the editions regularly. The essays were written in a so-called middle style and high education was not required for reading the majority of the contents. Over time, many periodical writers shaped their styles in order to satisfy the literary taste of the audience.

All periodical essays tend to be brief but texts written by a columnist and freelance essayist would slightly differ in length. The former writes his material trying to shape the subject of discussion to fit the requirements of the column. The latter though can take advantage of a more liberating approach by crafting his work the way he wants as long as his text manages to effectively highlight the subject.

Periodicals evolved in the 19 th century and single essays were almost fully replaced by serial essay publishing. The writings became more eclectic, flexible and brave being at the same time literary and conversational.

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Essay periodical

C. Grignion, ‘Frontispice of The Spectator’, The Spectator, 1763

The rise of the leisure press after 1690 caused the appearance of new forms of middle-class sociability. The tea-table is a case in point, around which the two sexes gathered, read periodical essays together, which provided subject matter to polite conversation. Periodicals, however, also staged new forms of sociability in their columns, constructing communities of readers which they endeavoured to instruct and educate. Periodical essayists promoted a Whig reformist agenda, which dictated new forms of sociability along gender lines. They projected an ideal of reasonable femininity which largely restricted female sociability to the domestic sphere. This model proved so hegemonic that it became difficult for later female journalists to discard it.

Practices > Reading & Writing

Practices > Communication

Concepts > Literary & Artistic genres

Concepts > Taste & Manners

Gendered sociability in the English periodical essay

While seventeenth-century English newspapers and the political press were largely associated with male coffeehouse sociability – customers could read the papers for the price of a cup of coffee – the leisure press which emerged after 1689 in the form of the periodical essay and prevailed in the first half of the eighteenth century, staged and gave birth to new forms of mixed sociability based on gender balance and politeness.

Essay periodicals , which could be dailies like The Spectator (1711-1712/1714) or The Guardian (1713), bi-weeklies like The Free-Thinker (1718-1721), or yet triweeklies like The Tatler (1709-1711) or The Lover (1714) were not only available in coffeehouses but also through private subscriptions. Women, who were barred access to coffeehouses, could therefore read them at home. Their literacy and purchasing power were improving fast. The Spectator for instance invited female readers to devote a daily quarter of an hour to reading the paper, claiming that it would later conveniently ‘furnish tea table talk.’ 1

1 . The Spectator n° 4, ed D. F. Bond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965, 5 vols.) vol. 1, p. 21.

The phrase itself shows the intimate relationship the Spectator ’s authors wished to establish between reading such ephemeral prints and shaping people’s social behaviours. Reading periodicals was conceived as an essentially collective activity. It was often performed aloud to a small audience whether in the coffeehouse or at home. First and foremost, each issue was expected to be commented upon and therefore served to popularize and redefine emerging, fashionable group activities such as tea or coffee drinking. Taking tea was a genteel form of sociability which became increasingly associated with femininity as the eighteenth-century unfolded. Its prestige was derived from the material cost and exoticism of tea and of tea sets. Yet, writers of essay periodicals often blamed it for encouraging idleness. They endeavoured to upgrade it to a more highbrow and moral form of sociability ; one which, thanks to their essays, combined entertainment and moral didacticism. It included literary and aesthetic conversation, as opposed to gossip. The Free-Thinker (1718-1721), a bi-weekly essay paper coedited by the poet Ambrose Philips and a circle of Hanoverian Whigs, typically ambitioned to teach the readers of both sexes how to ‘philosophize’, 2 a term which meant both to ponder philosophically but also to exchange about philosophy with other people. It therefore popularised the Cartesian and Lockean philosophies, claiming that they constituted the core principles of polite conversation understood as sociability.

2 . The Free-Thinker n° 147 (London, 1722), vol. 3, p. 308.

The move was in itself paradoxical. Periodicals claimed to improve upper-class forms of sociability by displacing their value from the luxurious material objects which had occasioned them, – the tea sets – to cheap yet enlightening prints 3 which would turn each tea /coffee table assembly into exclusive circles reminiscent of the seventeenth-century French salons . Doing so, they highlighted that the core tenets of sociability – politeness and conversation 4 – could in fact be practised without the luxurious parapharnelia of tea by the upper and middling ranks and could be a popular pedagogical instrument.

That papers favoured mixed sociability is confirmed by the very format of the journals. Periodical essays were commonly headed by untranslated Latin and Greek mottos, which created a sense of belonging to a reading community sharing the same culture. At the same time, since the mottos offered a further comment on the essays’ topics, they introduced several levels of understanding of the essays. They reflected the subtle distinctions of ranks and intellectual authority. While male readers had easy access to all levels of meanings and could discuss them, female readers, who were rarely literate in the classical languages, constituted a separate community of readers who could socialise with the main group only up to a certain extent. Yet, the lack of translation could also be a strategy to trigger and cement social relationships between the less educated and the more enlightened readers, with the latter explaining the meaning to the former.

3 . Periodicals cost one penny before the 1712 Act imposed a stamp duty which subsequently doubled their price.
4 . See The Tatler n° 225, ed. Donald F. Bond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987, 3 vols.), vol. 3, p. 172.

The community of readers was doubled by the creation of a mixed community of correspondents who were invited to write to the editors either to respond to the topics developped by the journals or to offer new essays. Epistolarity was one way of staging and enforcing harmonious sociability. The journals often mixed genuine letters and forged ones ; The Spectator banned gossip and personal satire 5 while The Free-Thinker fixed the rules of controversy and debates by forbidding personal abuses and misuse of words. 6

In addition, some of the papers were explicitly fashioned as the produce of polite sociability: some personas – fictional editors like Isaac Bickerstaff in The Tatler - allegedly wrote their columns from coffeehouses and used coffeehouse conversation topics and rumours as a source of inspiration. Other papers like The Female Tatler (1709-1710) or The Lover could transcribe the conversations of a fictitious team of writers meeting in a club.

5 . The Spectator n° 16, vol. 1, pp. 71-72.
6 . The Free-Thinker n° 26, vol. 1, p. 180.

It is noteworthy that translating the sociability of clubs onto paper could eventually serve as a pedagogical model for European elite sociability. This is evidenced by the Swiss Société du comte de la Lippe, a club of erudites meeting every saturday in Lausane in the 1740s in order to perfect the education of the young German Count of Lippe Detmold. Its distinguished members commented on various political and philosophical works, which included some of the essays of The Spectator and Guardian. 7

7 . Claire Boulard Jouslin, ‘Joseph Addison in Lausanne: Reading Addison’s works at the Société du Comte de la Lippe,’ in Claire Boulard Jouslin and Klaus-Dieter Ertler (ed.), Addison and Europe (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2020), pp. 163-177.

Many of the most famous early leisure essay periodicals (those of Addison and Steele and their circle of friends) promoted an ideal of sociability which, they claimed, was essentially commercial. Essay journals were commercial ventures offering guidance about how to interact harmoniously with others. They spread the idea that the language of social harmony and virtue was intimately related to that of credit and exchange. Defining sociability as a commercial activity was therefore a political move. Papers suggested that those who had contributed to turning Britain into a modern and prosperous parliamentary monarchy after the 1689 revolution were mostly the urban, professional, banking, upper and middle ranks which had financially supported the new regime. In other words they claimed that true male sociability was socially mixed, British, urban, and Whig. 8

8 . As opposed to the landed elite and freeholders who had the reputation of being Tories.

Essay periodical also defined commercial sociability in a broader sense that included moral and social issues. Following the moral agenda of the emerging Societies for the Reformation of Manners, journals had an Augustinian vision of society. They believed it to be corrupt and in need of moral reformation. Purporting to improve manners by promoting heightened morality, the periodicals dictated what the acceptable forms of sociability were and which ones should be banned. New forms of public sociability such as masquerading were repeatedly described as dangerous and scandalous because disguise gave too many freedoms to the sexes. The Spectator consistently satirised lower-rank male clubbing in essays on the two-penny club, 9 the ugly club, 10 etc., laughing at the aspirations and vanity of their members who foolishly aped elite and political institutions like the Kit Cat or the October clubs.

9 . The Spectator n° 9, vol. 1, p. 43.
10 . The Spectator n° 17, vol. 1, pp.74-76.

On the whole, the Whig journals’ prescriptive agenda tended to frame sociability along gender lines. In The Spectator , men’s and women’s sociabilities were dictated by what was believed to be their respective and complementary nature. Masculinity was defined as strong, learned and public while femininity was largely characterised as beautiful, fragile, sensitive and naturally caring. Combined with natural good sense, these respective qualities would enable men to socialise outside the family and manage their affairs in the coffeehouses or in the parliament, while ‘Fair sexing it’ 11 enabled journals to construct ideal feminine sociability as essentially domestic, private and rural ; ladies were expected to exercise their social skill within the narrow family sphere with their spouse, children and servants. The household was depicted as a sort of happy and apolitical commonwealth. 12

11 . Jonathan Swift coined the phrase in his Journal to Stella : ‘I’ll not meddle with the Spectator – let him fair-sex it to the world’s end.’
12 . The Spectator n° 15, vol. 1, p. 68: Aurelia embodies that kind of sociability in essay 15.

The papers often relied on character sketches to condemn the fashionable forms of sociability of upper-class women. For example, Fulvia ‘thinks life lost in her own Family, and fancies her self out of the World when she is not in the Ring, the Play-House, or the Drawing-Room. […] The missing of an Opera the first Night, would be more afflicting to her than the Death of a Child.’ 13

13 . The Spectator n° 15, vol. 1, p. 69.

Such forms of public sociability were also condemned for encouraging women to confuse sociability with publicity and ultimately with political proselytism. Ladies who displayed their political opinions on their fans or with their face patches 14 at the opera were charged with renouncing their natural qualities of meekness and with being animated by their passions. Their inadequate public sociability threatened the new political order because they would often end up adopting anti-social behaviours (losing their temper in public over political issues, or becoming coquettes in order to gain admirers to their cause).

The papers promised to be particularly useful to women readers by enlightening them on how to achieve polite, domestic sociability, and by offering them, a semi-private safe space where to socialise through epistolarity and where to find moral guidance.

The construction of sociability in and by The Tatler , The Spectator and their followers was therefore ambiguous because it was both an instrument of intellectual empowerment likely to soften and enrich social interaction, and, at least for women, a tool meant to restrict female social practice within private, apolitical bounds.

14 . The Spectator n° 81, vol. 1, p. 348.

This Whig ideal of polite sociability was so influential that it made it difficult for women journalists to offer an alternative definition. The main reason was that the ideal of female domestic sociability deprived women writers who sought to deal with matters unrelated with the private sphere of their authority. Since respectable ladies were not expected to be in contact with political or even economic forms of sociability, those who did were considered abnormal, unnatural females whose sociability was flawed from the start. This explains why by 1740 there were only three short-lived essay periodicals which used a female persona ; the two Female Tatlers 15 and the Parrot (1728) by Mrs Prattle. The latter, who declared ‘Scandal is the woman’s weapon’ 16 and vindicated women’s right to write scathing political satires against Walpole’s government clearly challenged the conversational model of virtuous female sociability promoted by Whig essay periodicals. It is highly meaningful that these three Tory journals sought to subvert the Whig doctrine precisely by assaulting the journalistic rhetoric of female virtuous sociability. They thus debunked the hypocritical foundation of Whig politeness and sociability which was so powerfully staged by the press.

T he model of polite female sociability was so hegemonic that when, later, female journalists like Eliza Haywood in her Female Spectator (1744-1746) sought to gain authorial authority by heading their magazines with a female persona, one essential precondition was to construct their journal as spaces promoting and defending private respectable female sociability.

15 . The first one was written by a persona named Mrs Crackenthorpe (1709) ; its continuation (1709-1710) was allegedly written by a club of six ladies who were in reality the playwright Suzanna Centlivre and the philosopher Bernard Mandeville.
16 . The Parrot n° 3 (October 9, 1728).
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Addison and Steele Q-THE PERIODICAL ESSAY

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Richard Squibbs is Associate Professor of English at DePaul University in Chicago and author of Urban Enlightenment and the Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essay (Palgrave, 2014). While he continues to publish articles on the British and early American periodical essay, he is also completing a monograph that explores the messy entanglements of picaresque fiction and the early English novel.

Published: 20 October 2022
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This chapter examines Johnson’s achievements as an essayist in relation to the established conventions of the periodical essay. With the Rambler , Johnson restored the periodical essay to its once-prominent place in English literary culture by elevating its moral seriousness and emphasizing its aptness as a vehicle for literary criticism. The success of the series spurred a revival of the genre at mid-century, albeit largely in reaction to the Rambler ’s relative gravity and ponderous diction. After doubling down on the Rambler ’s style with his contributions to the Adventurer , Johnson experimented with a more playful approach to the periodical essay in the Idler . The mixed critical reception of his efforts near the end of the century often associated his essays more with the moralist and critic Johnson had become than with the genre in which he first enjoyed popular success, an enduring perspective that this chapter aims to qualify.

What must Johnson have made of Oliver Goldsmith’s “resverie” in his short-lived periodical the Bee (1759), wherein the gruff coachman of “ The fame machine ” refuses Johnson a seat for his Dictionary but relents immediately upon realizing that this “very grave personage” is the author of the Rambler ? 1 To a writer who had striven for fame since arriving in London over twenty years before, such praise from a stranger was no doubt gratifying (Johnson and Goldsmith wouldn’t first meet for another eighteen months). And it might have boosted his morale as he toiled away at the Idler in the wake of terrible personal and financial setbacks, while still procrastinating on his long-delayed edition of Shakespeare. But while collected editions of the Rambler had sold moderately well by the time Goldsmith hailed it, Johnson may have been bemused nonetheless to see his literary immortality staked on his periodical essays rather than his monumental contribution to fixing the English language.

On the other hand, the relatively minor genre of the periodical essay seems to have appealed to Johnson because no one since its great originators, Addison and Steele, had managed to find enduring success in it. In the thirty-five years between the end of the Spectator and the first number of the Rambler , roughly three dozen essay series modeled on the Tatler , Spectator , and Guardian had appeared in London. Of these, only three titles were issued in collected editions more than three times; and even then, only the most recent, the Female Spectator (1744–6), would see an edition in print beyond the 1740s. 2 Meanwhile, new collected editions of Addison’s and Steele’s series continued to appear regularly every few years, with the latest brought out in 1749–50. Johnson’s aim was therefore to succeed in writing essays that would not just momentarily captivate the public but stand “the test of a long trial” like those of his great predecessors (Boswell, Life , vol. i, 201). And in this he half-succeeded. For while the Rambler ’s original periodical readership was small, the collected essays enjoyed a thriving afterlife as “classicks” for roughly seventy years, until English literary taste had changed sufficiently to make the rigor and religiosity of Johnson’s moralizing seem outmoded and dull. Goldsmith, then, was half-right too. Posterity indeed still remembers the Rambler , but only as the lesser writing of Dictionary Johnson.

From the vantage of 1759, however, Johnson’s single-handed restoration of the periodical essay to literary prominence was remarkable not just for the Rambler itself, but for stimulating a brief but prolific revival of the genre after more than three decades of mediocre iterations. The Rambler ’s ruminative style, generalizing philosophy, and sober self-criticism stripped the approach of Addison’s and Steele’s essays to what Johnson conceived as the genre’s bare rhetorical essence. Instead of recording the foibles of the Town in their time-bound details, he sought to abstract from them general principles of right and wrong conduct. When three major collections of periodical essays—James Harrison’s British Classicks (1786), J. Parsons’s Select British Classics (1793), and Alexander Chalmers’s British Essayists (1803)—canonized the genre at the end of the eighteenth century, all skipped straight from the Guardian to the Rambler and those series which immediately followed it. Nathan Drake, too, structured his five-volume history of the genre (1805, 1809) around these same high-water marks. But where Johnson looked to the Spectator as an inspiring example of how diurnal essays could live on into posterity, most essayists writing in the wake of the Rambler pointedly rejected Johnson’s religious seriousness and heavy-handed style. So even in the one literary genre in which Johnson was demonstrably influential, his example was mostly a negative one—fitting for such a dogged contrarian.

The Periodical Essay

The Rambler today is best known for its moral and intellectual rigor and elevated diction: a totemic expression of the older Johnson made familiar by Boswell. Among students of the eighteenth century who are not Johnsonians, roughly five essays have come to stand in for the series as a whole: Rambler 4 (on the novel), 5 (on Spring), 12 (on a young woman come to London for service), 60 (on biography), and 155 (on the danger of habits). In this, the Rambler has shared the fate of the Spectator , whose 635 essays are typically represented by the eight or so that are most often anthologized. But in the Spectator ’s case, we read them because of the ratified historical impact they had in constituting the modern public sphere and its characteristic print media. In the case of the Rambler , we read them because Boswell’s Johnson wrote them. Their difference from other periodical essays, in other words, is what marks them as Johnson’s and makes them worth reading. Taken as a whole, however, the Rambler offers insight not just into the literary development of Johnson’s characteristic philosophical tough-mindedness, but into a generic conception of the periodical essay that has been mostly lost to literary history.

As Boswell notes, Johnson undertook the Rambler to remedy a conspicuous absence in the publishing world of mid-century London: no essay series of comparable scope, moral intent, or literary and intellectual quality had appeared since the Spectator ’s last volume of 1714. So much time had elapsed, and so many inferior imitations had come and gone, in fact, that he believed such a publication would “have the advantage of novelty” ( Life , vol. i, 201). The Rambler ’s wordy, at times ponderous, style was certainly novel for the genre and much remarked upon (Boswell’s defense of it, comparing the acquired taste of Johnson’s harder “liquor of more body” to Addison’s instantly pleasing “light wine,” is among his most apt similes—even if he seems to have taken it from Johnson himself: Life , vol. i, 224). 3 And against the expectations of the title, Rambler essays tend to reek of the closed air of the study rather than sparkle with the liveliness of the town as had the Tatler and Spectator . This was deliberate, as Johnson found Steele’s essays wanting for “being mere Observations on Life and Manners without a sufficiency of solid Learning acquired from Books” (Boswell, Life , vol. i, 215). Instead of recording and reflecting on the minutiae of London life with such compelling style that his essays might eventually claim the notice of posterity, Johnson used the winnowing force of his intellect and rhetoric immediately to retrieve kernels of universal truth from the disposable husks of everyday situations. This made the Rambler responsive more to Johnson’s sense of what should always matter than to the comparatively petty matters of the day.

Johnson’s account of the Spectator ’s achievement in the Life of Addison offers crucial insight into this revisionist conception of the periodical essay. John Gay’s “Present State of Wit” (1711), the first extensive account of the new genre, provided the template, which Johnson would fill out with a deeper sense of literary history. Gay had marveled at how the Tatler dared “to tell the Town”—twice weekly—“that they were a parcel of Fops, Fools, and vain Cocquets” yet managed to reform readers’ behavior because it did so with such panache. 4 “’Tis incredible to conceive the effect his Writings have had on the Town,” Gay goes on; “How many Thousand follies they have either quite banish’d, or given a very great check to” while having “set all our Wit and Men of Letters upon a new way of Thinking” ( Poetry and Prose , vol. ii, 452). Though Town manners had started to backslide once the Tatler ceased publishing, Gay held out great hope for the newly published Spectator , whose “Spirit and Stile” and “Prodigious … Run of Wit and Learning” promises similarly great things (455). Johnson, too, praises the Tatler and Spectator for supplying “cooler and more inoffensive reflections” to “minds heated with political contest” by the newssheets of the day, noting that these essays “had a perceptible influence upon the conversation of that time, and taught the frolick and the gay to unite merriment with decency” (Yale Works , vol. xxii, 614). One can hear echoes of this account in Habermas’s still-influential theory of how the first English periodicals helped create modern public culture in Queen Anne’s London. Yet Johnson also situates this new form of print media in a longer history of European literature in ways that implicitly explain his manner of proceeding in the Rambler .

The Rambler was, in some ways, a throwback. But to what exactly? Boswell sought to explain and ennoble the Rambler ’s characteristic ponderousness by giving it a distinguished national pedigree. The rigor of Johnson’s style, he claimed, harks back to “the great writers of the last century, Hooker, Bacon, Sanderson, Hakewell, and others,” like Sir William Temple and Sir Thomas Browne ( Life , vol. i, 219, 221). By the time Boswell wrote this, the Rambler had become a “classic” of the English essay tradition, known to many more readers as handsomely bound volumes than it ever had been in periodical form; it had taken its rightful place, shelved alongside the tomes of early modern England’s hardest and most serious thinkers. The Rambler ’s original periodicity appears, from this vantage, incidental to its universal character and worth. Johnson’s own account of the periodical essay, however, emphasizes the genre’s complex, and necessary, engagement with its own moment. He also gives it a deep transnational pedigree, citing “Casa in his book of Manners , and Castiglione in his Courtier ” as key precedents for the Tatler ’s and Spectator ’s common mission to reform “the unsettled practice of daily intercourse by propriety and politeness” (Yale Works , vol. xxii, 614). But Johnson notes, too, that these English serials bear the influence of the popular Caractères (1688) of Jean de La Bruyère. This collection of satiric portraits of courtiers and citizens during the reign of Louis XIV “exhibited the “Characters and Manners of the Age” so engagingly and with such “justness of observation” that new French and English editions continued to be issued and read, long after the society, whose foibles La Bruyère skewered, had ceased to be (vol. xxii, 614, 612). By so successfully bridging the gap between timely moral writing and the regard of posterity, the Caractères in Johnson’s view provides a model to which authors of popular moral essays should aspire. The distinctively English innovation was to use the nation’s notorious public appetite for news and controversy, and the teeming print media which fed it, as a means of mass social and cultural improvement. 5

The Form of the Rambler

This potted history might suggest that Johnson wasn’t much concerned with the periodical essay’s formal dimensions, but the format he chose for the Rambler indicates otherwise. The Caractères in The Life of Addison appears not only as a conceptual bridge between present and future, but also formally as one between the Italian conduct books and the Spectator . While Castiglione’s Cortegiano (Book of the Courtier) (1528) is a collection of dialogues and Casa’s Galateo (A Treatise on Politeness) (1558) a monologic discourse, the Caractères is a miscellaneous collection of essays, moral reflections, and character sketches that manage to compel despite being “written without connection” (Yale Works , vol. xxii, 612). La Bruyère’s book, in a way, represents what would become the end of the publishing trajectory of the English periodical essay, as formerly weekly (or biweekly, or even daily) sheets responding to matters of the moment were collected in volumes and reprinted as morally, if not thematically, consistent wholes. The numerous sections of the Caractères , however, never circulated individually. In Johnson’s view, this may have hindered the work’s effectiveness, for writing that attempts to reform its readers’ morals and manners must be adapted formally to its intended sphere of action. Johnson notes that while English readers have long “had many books to teach us our more important duties,” before the Tatler and Spectator no literary works had appositely engaged the comparatively minor “track of daily conversation” that required for its reformation “the frequent publication of short papers, which we read not as study, but amusement” (vol. xxii, 613). The dignity of the form (minor though it may be) lies in its self-sufficiency: regularly circulated folio half-sheets act as a material bulwark of common sense against the flood of newssheets and controversial tracts “agitating the nation” (vol. xxii, 614). This was the original format of the periodical essay, to which Johnson deliberately returned with the Rambler .

Between the final number of the Spectator and the first of the Rambler , essay serials had appeared much more frequently as columns amidst the miscellaneous matter in magazines and newspapers than as individually published sheets. Many of these, like Lewis Theobald’s Censor , first published in Mist’s Journal (1715–17), were later brought out in collected editions to assert their enduring value apart from their original, evidently ephemeral, publication media. Such was the assumed cachet of the single-sheet essay that the preface to the Humourist (1720) claimed that its initial popularity when the essays had “appear’d Abroad singly” warranted this collected volume, though there’s no indication that the Humourist had ever circulated as individual sheets (1720, [xxxi]). 6 The folio half-sheet, according to Spectator 10, helped focus the mind amidst the myriad distractions of London and its teeming “publick Prints.” 7 The double-column printing of the Spectator ’s sheets, moreover, slyly mimicked the form of the standard early eighteenth-century newssheet in order to confound readers’ expectations when, instead of finding the usual miscellaneous material therein, they’d discover a single, sustained topic for reflection. By taking just the “Quarter of an Hour” required to read one of these essays each morning, London’s citizens could then apply the “sound and wholesome Sentiments” they contained to their daily experiences around town ( Spectator , vol. i, 47, 46). Johnson, as a former editor and miscellaneous writer for the Gentleman’s Magazine , recognized how essential this self-contained format was to the focusing aims of the periodical essay and refined it further to emphasize the genre’s inherent dignity. Each Rambler essay was printed in single columns across three half-sheets to make it stand out even more from other periodicals. The series was also the first printed without advertisements, and with sequential page numbering to encourage readers to keep and bind them in order. These changes materially reflect Johnson’s posterity-oriented conception of the periodical essay and would shortly be adopted by series like the Adventurer (1752–4), the World (1753–6), the Connoisseur (1754–6), the Mirror (1779–80), and the Lounger (1785–7). To write essays for the present was, for Johnson and his immediate successors, also to write for the edification of readers in an extensive, unknowable future.

The Topicality of the Rambler

While these formal departures indicate Johnson’s desire to elevate the Rambler above everyday pettiness and commercial concerns, the essays themselves were not unconcerned with matters of the moment. James Woodruff has shown how Johnson’s original readers would have easily grasped the topical relevance of a number of Rambler essays whose contemporary context is not immediately evident to us. Using London newspapers as his guide, Woodruff connects several essays on the problematic effects of sudden riches, and one on the force of chance in human affairs, to the public mania generated by the State Lottery drawing of 1751. 8 Rambler 107 (March 26, 1751) refers directly to the imminent shift in Britain from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar; the taxonomy in Rambler 144 of various types of pernicious detractors appeared amidst several cases of public reputation-trashing; the warning in Rambler 149 against prematurely condemning suspects of criminal acts followed on the heels of a widely reported instance of mob justice; and no. 148, dealing with “parental tyranny,” was published in the wake of news reports concerning multiple acts of parricide and filicide. 9 Besides these, the Rambler features recurring seasonal reflections; meditations during religious holidays; and critical essays on biography, history, prose fiction, and poetry which seem prompted by recent publications. Though Johnson would boast in the Rambler ’s final number that he had “never complied with temporary curiosity, nor enabled [his] readers to discuss the topick of the day” (Yale Works , vol. v, 316), this was true only in the most reductive sense. Research like Woodruff’s demonstrates how Johnson regularly aligned the Rambler ’s philosophical inquiries with topics of great public interest to demonstrate, by implication, how readers might come to recognize general or universal patterns of conduct (or moral truth) in what might otherwise appear passing matters of media-driven concern.

This Johnsonian impulse to reveal the enduring substance beneath superficial appearances informs the Rambler ’s signature rhetorical style as well. The contrast with the Spectator illuminates how each series models, in its essayistic form, different conceptions of how readers should engage with the world. A typical Spectator essay will declare its proposition concerning human character and conduct, and then move through a number of particular instances that demonstrate the validity of that proposition. “The most improper things we commit in the Conduct of our Lives, we are led into by the Force of Fashion,” begins Spectator 64. “Instances may be given, in which a prevailing Custom makes us act against the Rules of Nature, Law, and common Sense,” Mr. Spectator continues, “but at present I shall confine my Consideration of the Effect it has upon Men’s Minds, by looking into our Behaviour when it is the Fashion to go into Mourning.” Following an account of the history of courtly mourning rituals, the essay concludes by pointing out how absurd it is for the general public to adopt such rituals to mourn foreign princes with whom they have no connection, not least because the mass shift to mourning garb leaves domestic clothiers “pinched with present Want” for the period’s duration. The essay’s arch tone and wry depiction of the “wholesale Dealer in Silks and Ribbons,” who dreads the death of any “foreign Potentate” because of how this fashionable “Folly” will impact his bottom line, reinforce the worldliness of its moralizing ( Spectator , vol. i, 275–7). This pattern—followed throughout the Spectator —formally enacts the ideal process by which readers should mull over the general moral or philosophical points the essays raise as they encounter representative instances of them in their daily business around the Town and City.

The Rambler likewise matches its rhetoric to its aims, but with a key difference. Whereas the Spectator adduces worldly particulars to bear out its nuggets of general wisdom, Rambler essays often take circuitous tours from moral generalities through particular exceptions to these general rules, before returning to modified reaffirmations of these essays’ original propositions. “The heart of Johnson’s mission as a moralist,” according to Leopold Damrosch, “is to make us stop parroting the precepts of moralists and start thinking for ourselves” (81). The movement Damrosch describes from received precepts to the reader’s thoughtful reconsideration of them highlights individual moral agency to a greater degree than the more sociable ethos expressed (and modeled) throughout the Tatler and Spectator . Mark E. Wildermuth’s consideration of the religious dimensions of Johnson’s style in the Rambler likewise points to the series’ primary focus on individual moral and intellectual development. Each essay aims, he notes, “to expand our moral consciousness by prompting us to consider different kinds of perspectives, the human and the divine, the relative and the absolute, in order more fully to comprehend the spiritual and ethical significance of our behavior” (229). The rhetorical pattern Johnson used to try to catalyze this new comprehension is remarkably consistent throughout: over half of the Rambler ’s 208 essays (114, to be exact) begin by asserting a general idea or precept, which is then subjected to minute inquiry to ascertain just how far it applies to the vagaries of human experience. Of the remaining ninety-four essays, sixty-five are epistles from fictitious readers, with the rest comprising literary criticism (mostly of Milton’s verse and the folly of pastoralism) and Eastern tales—and even many of these essays revolve around common assumptions which Johnson proceeds to question. Whereas Addison and Steele primarily sought to make their readers better, more thoughtful citizens, Johnson wants his readers to adjust their expectations, and come to self-understanding, via a rational, gently skeptical, Christian morality. Only thus prepared, the Rambler insists, can readers fortify themselves against the fashionable caprices and material temptations of a superficial world.

The Religiosity of the Rambler

Johnson’s critical concern with the power of inherited opinion is unique in the history of the British periodical essay. The Rambler ’s musings often proceed either from a universal principle identified by one of the ancients (Cicero or Horace, usually) or from a long-held belief with which most would automatically agree. Over 20 percent of the essays, in fact, begin with some variant of the formulation “It has long been observed …” (Yale Works , vol. iv, 92), or “Nothing has been longer observed …” (vol. v, 172). This pattern, along with the wandering quality of the essays’ ruminations, speaks to Johnson’s intent to lay bare for readers how they might critically examine the validity of truisms and adapt them to more productive uses. Rambler 29, for instance, begins by asserting that “There is nothing recommended with greater frequency among the gayer poets of antiquity, than the secure possession of the present hour, and the dismission of all the cares which intrude upon our quiet” and ends with the Christian moral that “if we neglect the duties” of the present “to make provision against visionary attacks, we shall certainly counteract our own purpose” (vol. iii, 158–62). In a movement typical of the series, a pagan carpe diem ethos is surprisingly transformed, via a process of rational sifting and refinement, into a call to live a virtuous Christian life. Following ancient sensualist practice is, of course, absurd for those living with the benefits of Christianity, Johnson avers; yet “the incitements to pleasure are, in these authors, generally mingled with such reflections upon life, as well deserve to be considered distinctly from the purposes for which they are produced.” The essay then moves through arguments concerning the paralytic effects of an “idle and thoughtless resignation to chance”; the reason why “a wise man is not amazed at sudden occurrences” (because he “never considered things not yet existing as the proper objects of his attention,” not because he has special insight into “futurity”); and how the traditional moralists’ check to “the swellings of vain hope by representations of the innumerable casualties to which life is subject” can work equally well as “an antidote to fear” of the unknown by reinforcing just how much of life exceeds our control. It ends by musing on how indulging imaginary fears prevents us from recognizing that every moment offers opportunities for the work of moral improvement, the only real route to “human happiness”—a conception of the good, and of the means of attaining it, far afield from the essay’s opening precept. But the essential point—that worrying about an unknowable future prevents us from living the good life, however we conceive it—abides through all the philosophical and religious transmutations to which Johnson rigorously subjects it.

The Rambler ’s method of testing and qualifying received moral wisdom is brought to bear on even the hoariest sentiments, such as the universality of the “wish for riches.” Rambler 131 (Yale Works , vol. iv, 331–5) begins by affirming that “Wealth is the general center of inclination, the point to which all minds preserve an invariable tendency.” There’s good reason for this, as “No desire can be formed which riches do not assist or gratify”; and it follows that since wealth is the surest means to gratification, the temptation to acquire it via “subtilty and dishonesty” is nearly as universal as the desire for wealth itself. After several paragraphs detailing the social ramifications of this problem (general unease, endemic fraud, the unfortunate “punctilious minuteness” of contracts), the essay concludes by facing up to the stubborn fact of inequality, which exacerbates the universal desire for riches. While we might pine for a lost “golden age” and its “community of possessions,” Johnson posits, it has vanished forever along with the “spontaneity of production” which made it possible. For production has long since depended on labor, and in spite of the “multitudes” who “strive to pluck the fruit without cultivating the tree,” “property” rightfully accrues to those who work for it. Readers determined not to resort to fraud, nor to take “vows of perpetual poverty” (which Johnson dismisses as an unproductive escape into “inactivity and uselessness”), are left with one course of action: to embrace “riches” as a means “necessary to present convenience” while adhering rigorously to “justice, veracity, and piety” in the pursuit and use of them. The intellectual loop Johnson runs here, like that of Rambler 29 and so many others, takes readers from an inherited truism, through a variety of instances which account for and test it, and back to the original proposition seen anew from the solid, common-sense grounding of basic Christian morality. It’s a form of baptism-by-argument, plunging readers into the fluid medium of worldly knowledge illuminated by Christian piety, from which they emerge with new perspectives on themselves, and their moral-cultural inheritance.

The Adventurer and the Universal Chronicle

The Rambler ’s pervasive religiosity, however moderated by the genre’s customary worldliness, is new to the periodical essay. While subsequent series like the World , the Connoisseur , and the Lounger would revert to the less religious, topical-satiric mode associated with the Tatler and Spectator , the next significant London half-sheet essay periodical the Adventurer (1752–4) carried on the religious turn—not surprisingly, given that Johnson wrote for it. Started by John Hawkesworth, who had succeeded Johnson as parliamentary reporter for the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1744 and would go on to literary fame for his edition of Swift’s works (1765–6) and The Three Voyages of Captain Cook (1773–84), the series was also brought out by John Payne, the Rambler ’s publisher. Johnson wrote roughly a quarter of its 140 numbers, as did Joseph Warton; Hawkesworth was responsible for most of the rest, with assistance on a few papers from Bonnell Thornton (who would shortly begin the Connoisseur with George Coleman) and several others—all anonymously. According to Payne, the Adventurer ’s “ultimate design … [was] to promote the practice of piety and virtue upon the principles of Christianity; yet in such a manner that they for whose benefit it is chiefly intended may not be tempted to throw it aside”: in other words, to do what the Rambler did. 10 And it succeeded, for the Adventurer initially outsold the Rambler in both its original sheets and its first folio and duodecimo editions. The series followed its predecessor, too, in presenting itself—even more explicitly—as a collection designed with posterity in mind. A note at the end of the Adventurer ’s first essay informed readers that “These Numbers will be formed into regular Volumes, to each of which will be printed a Title, a Table of Contents, and a Translation of the Mottos and Quotations”; another at the bottom of no. 70 reads “End of the First Volume”; and the last essay notes that “when [the Adventurer ] was first planned, it was determined, that, whatever might be the success, it should not be continued as a paper, till it became unwieldy as a book.” 11 Though now known only to the most devoted eighteenth-century specialist (and even then only for the twenty-nine essays Johnson had anonymously authored), editions of the Adventurer were reprinted nearly as often as those of the Rambler through the 1790s. 12 The explicit religiosity of both, however, remained unique; only the Looker-On (1792–3), a half-sheet essay series which later marshaled Christian piety against the immediate threat of Jacobin infidelity, would work in a similar vein.

Even as Johnson can claim to have revived the periodical essay with the Rambler , the mid-century literary marketplace remained a difficult environment for such ventures. The World and Connoisseur were singularly successful, publishing as weekly sheets for four and nearly three years, respectively, but the rest of the essay series that followed the Adventurer were either short-lived or first appeared as columns in magazines and reviews, and then quickly forgotten. Johnson, too, capitulated to the realities of the market and published the Idler in the Universal Chronicle , a weekly review that appeared every Saturday from April 15, 1758 to April 5, 1760. The details of Johnson’s involvement in the paper beyond writing the Idler are murky, but Payne published the first thirty numbers, after which the Chronicle underwent two changes in publishing arrangements until it finally folded with its 104th number. Each issue ran eight pages, printed in three columns, and began with an Idler essay. Highlights from the week’s news culled from other papers followed, mostly centered on London, though coverage of events in Scotland, Ireland, and foreign countries featured as well, along with poems and political essays, and advertisements (which appeared regularly after Payne gave up the paper). While the Chronicle struggled to find readers, a number of Idler essays were widely reprinted in other newspapers and magazines during the paper’s run; and volumes of the series were brought out over a dozen times through the end of the century, in addition to being included in Harrison’s and Parsons’s collections of “classicks.” So the Idler was another measured success for Johnson in this genre.

Critically, the Idler has been treated as an afterthought. Walter Jackson Bate’s remark that “the confirmed Johnsonian finds them thin” (Yale Works , vol. ii, xix) has colored reception of the essays ever since, to the extent that while the Rambler ’s critical bibliography runs to over fifty published entries, there are only seven article-length studies devoted to the Idler . 13 An unconfirmed Johnsonian, however, can discern in the Idler ’s lighter touch and more consistent engagement with Town life Johnson’s purposeful return to the established conventions of the periodical essay. Like the Rambler , the Idler features literary criticism, Eastern tales, and general moral reflections. Since Idler essays are shorter, the critical pieces mostly focus on broad evaluative principles instead of meticulously analyzing verse structure as in the Rambler ’s Milton essays. The Idler ’s early numbers also deal explicitly with current events, the series having begun nearly two years into the Seven Years’ War (essays 5 through 8 concern the war, a topical focus nowhere evident in the Rambler ). Bate argues that while this topical turn indicates that Johnson initially wanted to distinguish the new series from its predecessor, the Idler ’s reversion in later numbers to universal subjects and literary criticism suggests that Johnson found it easier in the end to rely on the approach he had pioneered in the Rambler . Given Johnson’s habitual indolence and pressure to continue working on his Shakespeare edition, this seems plausible. But the pervasive differences between the two series imply that Johnson wanted to explore a side of the genre that he had de-emphasized in the Rambler .

Though it lacks the Rambler ’s analytical rigor, the Idler translates its predecessor’s concern with self-scrutiny into a more humorous, workaday idiom. Between the Adventurer ’s last and the Idler ’s first number, the World and the Connoisseur had infused the periodical essay with a sharper sense of irony and satire. Both series present a London public marked by shallow and materialistic self-absorption that, especially in the Connoisseur , reflects the failure of the Spectator and other periodical essays to make good on the genre’s promise to create thoughtful, reflective citizens. 14 The gleeful irreverence with which they skewered the pretentions of Town life, though far afield from the pious sobriety we associate with the Rambler , seems to have registered with Johnson as he embarked on his final essay series, which is indeed marked by a greater “satiric impulse” (O’Flaherty, “Johnson’s Idler ,” 213). But the Idler ’s gentle satires of ordinary foibles suggest that Johnson strove to mitigate the barbed severity of the World and Connoisseur by restoring to the periodical essay the more tolerant and sociable tenor of Addison’s and Steele’s work.

The Idler ’s worldview is thus narrower and less historically extensive than the Rambler ’s. Whereas Rambler essays typically point to how long a traditional notion has been held before skeptically picking it apart, the Idler follows the Spectator by offering entertaining confirmation of bits of common knowledge. Only eight Idler essays (out of 104) take the Rambler ’s approach; the rest begin by stating what is “commonly observed” ( Idler 11, in Yale Works , vol. ii, 36) or what “commonly happens” ( Idler 18, vol. ii, 56), or by presenting a precept (“There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth”: Idler 20, vol. ii, 62; “Prudence is of more frequent use than any other intellectual quality”: Idler 57, vol. ii, 177) before showing, in a series of examples, how these nuggets of wisdom play out in daily life. This is not the intellectual baptism performed by the Rambler . But the way that many Idler essays dismantle the moral self-righteousness which is always a potential upshot of social satire does recall the Rambler ’s skeptical method.

This aim of the Idler accounts, in part, for the prominence of character sketches in the series (36 percent of Idler essays feature sketches, compared with 21 percent in the Rambler ). Where his first essay series aimed to make readers more independently thoughtful and pious individuals, Johnson’s second strives to promote an ethos of generosity and mild tolerance by reminding readers that they, too, are subject to the foibles they snicker at in others. The example of La Bruyère’s Caractères therefore looms larger in the Idler than it had in the Rambler . But while the best known of the Idler ’s sketches (nos. 60 and 61, devoted to the hapless critic Dick Minim) hew close to traditional character portraits, Johnson sets most of the others in letters from fictional correspondents, which adds another layer of subtlety to his use of them to promote social morality. The letters from Robin Spritely in nos. 78 and 83 exemplify this perfectly. Spritely’s portraits of Sim Scruple, Dick Wormwood, Bob Sturdy, and Phil Gentle in no. 83 slot in neatly with the English tradition of descriptively named characters: Scruple delights in raising doubts; Wormwood compulsively contradicts everyone and everything; Sturdy’s convictions are unshakable; and Gentle acquiesces in every situation. A tenor of amused indulgence prevails as Spritely anatomizes the folly of each, showing at the end how Gentle’s refusal to take a position in an inconclusive debate allows all the others privately to feel as if they’ve actually won. Beyond what is implied in these humorous portraits of personal quirks, however, there’s no culminating lesson about proper conduct. These characters simply are who they are: harmless eccentrics whose leading traits an alert reader might mark in any crowd. The fictional letter form moreover allows Johnson to avoid the rigid moralizing of the traditional essayist. Readers must decide how much authority to grant Spritely, who confesses his own failings when he notes that it has taken him a month to follow up his first letter because he (like Johnson) is an inveterate procrastinator despite “how often” he has “praised the dignity of resolution” (Yale Works , vol. ii, 259). This sort of broad acceptance of everyday shortcomings, rooted in clear-eyed self-criticism, is the Idler ’s characteristic mode.

The Idler ’s aim to restore the tolerant good humor of the Tatler and Spectator to the genre thus parallels the Rambler ’s reassertion of the classic periodical essay’s formal integrity with its half-sheets. And the distinct tenor of each series finally harmonizes in the Idler ’s last number. The coincidental publication of this final essay on Holy Saturday makes Johnson nudge his readers to begin “the review of life” and “the renovation of holy purposes,” for “the termination of any period of life reminds us that life itself has likewise its termination” (Yale Works , vol. ii, 259). It’s a somewhat jarring conclusion to “this series of trifles,” though only those determined to hear nothing but sententiousness in Johnson’s voice could miss the winking in the essay’s last words, which encourage readers to think of “the day in which every work of the hand, and imagination of the heart shall be brought to judgment, and an everlasting futurity shall be determined by the past” (vol. ii, 259). His abiding concern with literary posterity—heard more explicitly in the Rambler ’s concluding ruminations on his “future life” and “the final sentence of mankind”—was never far from Johnson’s mind, even when producing these comparative “trifles” (vol. v, 318; vol. ii, 259).

Looking back from 1802, Alexander Chalmers summed up the Rambler ’s critical fortunes: once “the prejudices which were alarmed by a new style and manner” in the periodical essay had subsided, readers widely acknowledged the “general merit of this work” despite some quibbles from “critics and grammarians” concerning its “labored, and perhaps pedantic sentences.” While a “new set of objectors have appeared since the author’s death,” Chalmers charges them with petty “hostility” to a work designed not “for the uneducated part of the world, nor for those who, whatever their education, read only for their amusement.” 15 Chalmers’s defense of the Rambler ’s lofty aims and dismissal of complaints about its difficult language reveals how much the critical tide had turned by the end of the eighteenth century. He does, however, exaggerate how shocked readers were by the series when it first appeared, for the ostensible “alarm” at the Rambler ’s “style and manner” was quite late in sounding: not until 1779, when Vicesimus Knox censured the “affected appearance of pomposity”—“disgusting to all readers”—which makes the Rambler “greatly inferior to the easy and natural Spectator,” did critics begin to assert a strong preference for the more genial style of Addison and Steele (Chalmers, in Critical Heritage , 81). 16 Before then, and still well into the 1780s, critical assessments of the series repeated verbatim David Erskine Baker’s 1764 declaration that the Rambler “proved at least equal, if not superior, to” the Tatler and Spectator . 17 Even those like Joseph Towers, who found the Rambler “less calculated for general reading” than the Spectator , and James Harrison, who regretted that the essays are “encumbered by words which possess too much Latinity for a mere English reader,” concurred that it was “more interesting to literary men” and an “exquisite periodical paper.” 18

Yet by the end of the 1790s a critical consensus had developed that the Rambler ’s laborious language interfered with the modus operandi of the periodical essay—to help readers more deeply appreciate the moral dimensions of everyday life. The Idler ’s reputation, meanwhile, rose a bit as the Rambler ’s declined, while the Adventurer —considered as “a continuation” of the Rambler —was typically dispatched in a single sentence. 19 William Shaw’s preference of the Idler for its “spirit” and “greater variety of subjects” was still unusual in 1785; but when Arthur Murphy less than a decade later characterized the Idler as “the Odyssey after the Iliad ” because its “style of ease and unlaboured elegance” offers a pleasing break from “the fatigue of thinking” the Rambler foists on readers, he demonstrated why the Idler could have wider popular appeal (Murphy, in Critical Heritage , 72). 20 By the time Chalmers rose to the Rambler ’s defense, contending that in the Idler Johnson “sometimes forgot the exclusive business of the moral Essayist, [and] meddled with the occasional politics of the day,” he faced a growing consensus that, as William Mudford put it, “Johnson’s reflections on life in [the Idler ] are more natural than in his Rambler ,” and hence “far more valuable.” 21 Judged by early nineteenth-century standards of nature, it was clear to most that the Idler displays “more candour in [its] delineations, and more veracity in [its] assertions” than its more professedly serious predecessor (Mudford, in Critical Heritage , 80).

By the time William Hazlitt published his Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819), the revolution in English critical assessments of the Rambler was complete. Johnson’s major achievement as an essayist was, to Hazlitt, everything that a periodical essay series should not be: unnatural, unoriginal, stilted, and leaden. Compared with the “memorandums of the events and incidents of the day, … finished studies after nature, and characters fresh from the life” that abound in the Tatler and Spectator , the Rambler to Hazlitt appears as an “imposing commonplace-book of general topics” containing “hardly a reflection … which had not been already suggested and developed by some other author, or in the common course of conversation.” 22 Johnson “does not set us thinking for the first time,” nor do the essays offer readers anything like “a new truth gained to the mind” ( Collected Works , vol. viii, 100). And where Murphy had offered a portrait of Johnson in the Rambler as “a dictator in his splendid robes” who “darts his lightning, and rolls his thunder, in the cause of virtue and piety” ( Critical Heritage , 71), Hazlitt represents Johnson’s style as “the mimic thunder at one of our theatres,” while “the light he throws upon a subject is like the dazzling effect of phosphorous, or an ignis fatuus of words” ( Collected Works , vol. viii, 101). Curiously, Hazlitt ignores the Idler , which would seem closer in tenor and execution to his ideal of the periodical essay (though he does pause to dismiss the Adventurer as “completely trite and vapid”: Collected Works , vol. viii, 104). Perhaps it was enough to erect the Rambler as the main foil to the Spectator . To an extent, this is how the Rambler is still read. What has changed is our tendency to consider the essays as concentrated expressions of Johnson’s moral and philosophical thought rather than to situate them firmly in the popular milieu of the periodical essay. In this post-Boswell context, the Rambler seems always to have transcended its moment in ways that make Hazlitt appear to have missed the point. But, by overlooking the extent of Johnson’s particular engagement with this once ubiquitous and highly regarded genre, we too can miss much about his achievements as an essayist.

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Periodical Essay – Definition & Meaning

The periodical essay is called ‘periodical’ because the periodical essays appeared in journals and magazines which appeared periodically in the eighteenth century. It flourished in the 18th century and died in the same century. Its aim was public rather than private. Its object was social reformation.

It conformed to the neo-classical ideal which placed a premium, not so much on the personal revelation and confession of the author himself as on his duty to inform the mind and delight the heart of the reading public. The periodical essay differs from the essays of Montaigne, Bacon, Hazlitt or Lamb because their essays were published collectively at one time in a single volume and presented a personal point of view to the readers.

The periodical essay like its other brothers, the novel and coffee houses tended to refine the taste and tone, the cultural and moral outlook of the educated and the wealthy middle classes. It was the literature of the middle classes, for the middle classes and by the middle classes of the eighteenth century. It has all the features of journalism-a wider appeal, a larger coverage. Brevity and precision, simple and chaste English, delicate tone and elegant style. The periodical essay had a double aim: to amuse and to improve. The subjects discussed by the periodical essayists were connected with the varied aspects of the social life with the city of London in the center. The style was deliberately easy, lucid and refined.

The periodical essay began In the year 1709 with the first periodical essay appearing in the Tattler on April 12. The real makers of the periodical essay were men of contrasted characters and temperaments. The Tattler and The Spectator set the fashion for all periodical papers and were soon followed by other imitations. Steele himself brought out the Guardian in 1713, and soon a host of other imitations like the Female Tattler, Whisper made their appearance and thus testifying to the popularity of this class of writing. The best of the wits of the age contributed to all these papers. Swift, Pope, Berkeley. Congreve, Parnell and others wrote occasionally for these papers and the vogue thus created for literary journalism continued right through the century and the next. Almost all the great figures in the literary field contributed either occasionally or regularly to such periodicals. Apart from the political nature of such periodicals, these papers became the chief organ for literary self-expression. Addison started Whig Examiner and Steele came out with Examiner, representing the Tory point of view. Fielding likewise was connected with the Champion; and the Craftsman and the Common-sense were two other journals of the same political colouring as the Champion. Ambrose Phillips made use of the Free Thinker to air forth his views. There were the Plain Dealer and the Farrot too. The growth of the political parties gave to these periodicals a strong party bias and each paper became the organ of one political party or the other. But while their political nature and learning are unmistakable their use of literary wits as the service ground is encouraging. They afforded to the literary aspirants an outlet for self-expression and by so doing, brought out to the full their talents.

The greatest and the best figures of the periodical essay are Addison and Steele. Addison and Steele was also associated with a darker and more somber personality, the greatest and most biting satirist of the age, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) who transcended the limits of the periodical essay. His important contributions to the periodical essay are :

Predictions for the Year 1708.
Account of the Death of Mr. Partridge,
Letter to a Very Young Lady on Her Marriage,
Meditations upon a Broom-stick, etc.

In the pleasant art of living with one’s fellows, Addison is easily a master, “Swift is the storm, roaring against the ice and frost of the late spring of English life. Addison is the sunshine, which melts the ice and dries the mud and makes the earth thrill with light and hope. Like Swift, he despised shams, but unlike him, he never lost faith in humanity and in all his satires there is a gentle kindliness which makes one think better of his fellow men, even while he laughs to their little vanities” (Long).

To an age of fundamental coarseness and artificiality Addison came with a wholesome message of refinement and simplicity, much as Ruskin and Amold spoke to a later age of materialism; only Addison’s success was greater than theirs because of his greater knowledge of life and his greater faith in men. He attacks all the little vanities and all the big vices of his time, not in Swift’s terrible way, which makes us feel hopeless of humanity, but with a kindly ridicule and gentle humour which takes speedy improvement for granted. To read Swift’s brutal “Letters to a Young Lady”, and then to read Addison’s ‘Dissection of a Beau’s Head” and his “Dissection of a Coquette’s Heart” is to know at once the secret of the latter’s more enduring influence.

Addison’s essays are the best picture of the new social life of England. They advanced the art of literary criticism to a much higher stage than it had ever before reached, and led Englishmen to a better knowledge and appreciation of their own literature. Furthermore, in Ned Softly the literary dabbler, Will Wimble the poor relation, Sir Andrew Freeport the merchant, Will Honeycomb the fop, and Sir Roger the country gentleman, they give us characters that live forever as part of that goodly company which extends from Chaucer’s country parson to Kipling’s Mulvaney.

Addison and Steele not only introduced the modern essay, but in such characters as cited above they herald the dawn of the modern novel. Of all his essays the best known and loved are those which introduce us to Sir Roger de Coverley, the genial dictator of life and manners in the quiet English country.

In style these essays are remarkable as showing the growing perfection of the English language. Johnson says, “Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison”. And again he says, “Give nights and days, sir, to the study of Addison if you mean to be a good writer, or, what is more worth, an honest man”.

So the periodical essays, more particularly the essays of Addison and Steele, are well worth reading once for their own sake, and many times for their influence in shaping a clear and graceful style of writing.

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How To Write a Periodical Essay

December 26, 2016

Periodical essay papers are a journey or journal through one's eye or characters develop based on series of events accordingly.

Essay papers based on periodical is affected by century, culture, language and belief of the community, showing the mirror of their age, the reflection of their thinking. How literature acts as a medium in daily’s usage of a population in certain areas affect most on how this periodical journal is produced, how characters are developed, what makes the journal stands out from the others and so on.

How To Write?

Joseph Addison and Steele have applied periodical essay in their papers which are Tatler in 1709-1711 and Spectator in 1711-1712 and again in 1714. This means that custom periodical essay papers have been recognized and used the long time ago to produce series of events through custom essay papers. It is said that custom periodical essay papers existed even before Joseph Addison and Steele start their work, through sketches and letters from various features.

The most successful periodical essays can be a long list. Most influential custom periodical essay papers include Henry Fielding’s Covent Garden Journal in 1752, Samuel Johnson’s Rambler in 1750- 1752, Henry Mackenzie’s Mirror in 1779-1780, Oliver Goldsmith in 1757 to 1772 to name a few.

Cultures and analysis of the ways relate to the associations are reflected through actors characterization and goals for the particular projects. The role of maintaining language practices in the community allows these essayists to work on their periodical essay papers customization. College essay papers also related to social networks in a culture by the time these papers are produced.

That is basically how these popular periodical essays gain attention from worldwide at their century.

Editorial Policies

The impact on periodical essay papers was immediate through the eighteenth century. It is definitely beyond Addison and Steller's expectations as well as publications. These guys re-modeled their content and editorial policies of their periodical essay, Tatler, and Spectator, as well as Guardian into different languages outside England, gained immediate attention from a community outside England.

Oliver Goldsmith from 1757 to 1772 also contributed to numbers of custom periodical essay including The Monthly Review with ran to eight weekly numbers. His best work, The Citizen of the World in 1762 proves that he is attractive, lack of formality and sensitive as the main attraction to his periodical essay.

Periodically essay is still emerging despite the deep roots and far-reaching networks by the eighteenth century. These essay papers belong to definite period due to its tight connection in publishing practices, politics, and law.

Howeve,r the numbers of publication rise and fall considerably even at times of national crisis.

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The Periodical Essay and Journal of The 18th Century

Updated August 7, 2022

Could you guess as why periodical essay came into being as special genre of prose writing? If not, let me overstate that these essays were an elegant piece of writing to appeal middle class of England in 18th Century. These periodical articles for journals aimed changes in social conduct and reformation in larger context. Precisely, Periodical essays were first social documents of modern writing.

Although, the literary history terms entire 18 th century as the Age of Pope but the Age of Queen Anne (1665-1714) is remarkable for the growth and development of prose literature. This age witnessed the flowering of the periodical essay in the hands of great writers like Addison and Steele. The beginning of prose fiction has also its root in this age.

The Periodical Essay and Journal

The periodical Essay forms a special branch of the 18 th century English prose. In fact, it was entirely a new kind of development in the field of prose writing. In this regard, it is imperative to know why was the term ‘Periodical Essay’ used for this genre of writing. It is called ‘periodical’ because these essays appeared in journals and magazines which were published periodically in those days. These essays were different in contents and style from other prose writings.

Moreover, these are regarded as the social documents on the 18 th century England. The object of these essays was to bring about social reformation. It is interesting to note that these essays were of the middle classes, for the middle classes and by the middle classes. These essays became highly popular the moment they were published.

The reasons of their popularity had to do with their brevity, precision, a wider appeal, larger coverage, simple and chaste English and elegant style. These essays provided amusement as well as improvement in social behavior. The writers of this age wrote many periodical essays and journal which portrays the then middle classes and deprived classes.

Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) and Joseph Addison (1662-1719) as Founding Father of Periodical Essay

Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison were the real founders of periodical essays. Steele was the founder of “ The Tatler ” (1709). It appeared three times a week. He used to write under the pseudonym of Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff and recommended truth, innocence, honour and virtue as the chief ornaments of life.

Later Addison and some other prose writers started contributing to it. “ The Tatler ” became very popular but lasted less than two years. But within two months Steele launched “ The Spectator” in collaboration with Addison. But it was not simply “ The Tatler ” revised. It was different in the sense that it avoided the political affairs and in place of several short essays, it consisted of a single long essay. It used to appear daily.

“ The Spectator ” had two principal aims- the first was to present in the essays a true and faithful picture of the 18 th century life and the second was to bring about a moral and social reform in the conditions of the time. Steele and Addison combated the social evil of the time through their periodical essays.

Simply put, both the writers commented on the gay fopperies, the ball dances, the club sittings, the cock-hunting, the violence of political and religious strife and the ugliness of the society. In fact, they were the voices of a new and civilized urban life. Both these writers worked as the great educators of the 18 th century. They established “essay” as an important branch of English literature.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) as Profound Contributor to Periodical Essay

Jonathan Swift of “Gulliver’s Travels” fame also contributed to periodical essays. But his contributions to “The Tatler”, “The Spectator” and also to “Intelligencer” were meager. His “journal to Stella” is an outstanding description of the contemporary characters and political events. His genius, however, was best revealed in his work fiction.

Daniel Defoe (1661-1731) as Pioneer of Periodical Essays

Daniel Defoe is said to be the pioneer of periodical essays. His important essays are found in “The Review”. Later “The Little Review” appeared in which he contributed essays on the vices and follies of the society. He also contributed to “Mist’s Journal” and “Applebee Journal”.

On top, Daniel Defoe has also written other prose and novels. His semi-fictional work “Robinson Crusoe” made him famous. Later he wrote successful works like “Moll Flanders”, “Colonel Jacque” and “The Unfortunate Mistress” or “Roxana”. All these works are closer to being novels.

Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) As Reviver Of Periodicals

He was also a great prose writer of the 18 th century. Though he is famous for his monumental work “The Dictionary of the English Language “, he contributed to “The Gentleman magazine” and his own periodical “ The rambler ”. His essays were full of deep thought and minute observation. “The Rambler” is credited with re-establishing the periodical essay when it was in the danger of being overtaken by the daily newspapers.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728- 1774) as Mighty Periodical Writer

Oliver Goldsmith contributed to “ The Morality Review ”. He also contributed to several other periodicals and enriched the genre. His essays reveal his extraordinary power, boldness, tenderness and originality of thoughts. They are also remarkable for the minute observation of man and manners. “ The Traveller ”, and “ The Deserted Village ” are the prominent writing of the Oliver Goldsmith.

The periodical essays and journals were immensely popular during the 18 th century. One of the reasons was their avoidance of heated religious and political controversies. These essays generally maintained the middle path. Unfortunately, this form of literature died in the same century in which it flourished.

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Definition of periodical

(Entry 1 of 2)

Definition of periodical (Entry 2 of 2)

episodical

Examples of periodical in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'periodical.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

1585, in the meaning defined at sense 1

1798, in the meaning defined above

Phrases Containing periodical

periodical cicada

Dictionary Entries Near periodical

periodic acid

Cite this Entry

“Periodical.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/periodical. Accessed 14 May. 2024.

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Kids definition of periodical.

Kids Definition of periodical (Entry 2 of 2)

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Meaning of periodical in English

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above/below the fold idiom
circulation
glossy magazine
house journal
house organ
Sunday paper

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COMMENTS

Periodical Essay Definition and Examples
Periodical Essay Definition and Examples. A periodical essay is an essay (that is, a short work of nonfiction) published in a magazine or journal--in particular, an essay that appears as part of a series. The 18th century is considered the great age of the periodical essay in English. Notable periodical essayists of the 18th century include ...
Periodical Essay: Origin, Growth & Definition in 18th Century
The Causes of the Rise of Periodical Literature. There were a number of causes which led to the emergence or the periodical essay in the eighteenth century: 1. Political Rivalry and Growth of Political Parties. The eighteenth century saw the emergence of the two major political parties, the Whigs and the Tories.
The eighteenth-century periodical essay (Chapter 20)
The periodical essay is proper to a certain phase of periodical publication, which got its start in England during the Civil War but was not fully established until 1702, when the first true daily, the Daily Courant, began. In the early years, government control of the press had a powerful effect on periodical publication, which flourished most ...
What is a periodical essay?
A periodical essay is a type of prose non- fiction published in a periodical. A periodical is a type of serial publication such as a magazine or newspaper that appears at regular intervals. It ...
The Gazette, the Tatler, and the Making of the Periodical Essay: Form
Richard Steele, Gazetteer. One goal of this article is to resituate Steele's centrality to the formation of the Tatler and Spectator and to the identity of the periodical. Scholarship often positions the Tatler as a stepping stone on the way to the Spectator and Steele as secondary to Addison, who wrote the most famous essays and is often credited with the witty, moralizing tone of the later ...
What Is a Periodical Essay?
A periodical essay is a type of writing that is issued on a regular basis as a part of a series in editions such as journals, magazines, newspapers or comic books. It is typically published daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly and is referenced by volume and issue. Volume indicates the number of years when the publication took place while issue ...
Essay periodical
Essay periodical also defined commercial sociability in a broader sense that included moral and social issues. Following the moral agenda of the emerging Societies for the Reformation of Manners, journals had an Augustinian vision of society. They believed it to be corrupt and in need of moral reformation.
Eighteenth-Century British Periodicals
The periodical essay survived Goldsmith's attempts—which were largely unconscious, of course—to pervert it from its Addisonian norm. ... Less easy to define and discern is the early ...
The eighteenth-century periodical essay
Despite deep roots in literary tradition and a far-reaching influence, the periodical essay is a genre that flourished only in a fifty-year period between 1709 and 1759. The rise of the genre ...
(DOC) THE PERIODICAL ESSAY IN THE
Throughout the century there was a deluge of periodical essays. The periodical essay remained the most popular, if not the dominant, literary form. Men as different as Pope, Swift, Dr. Johnson, and Goldsmith found the periodical essay an eligible medium. As a matter of fact it was, unlike the novel for example, the only literary form which was ...
Addison and Steele Q-THE PERIODICAL ESSAY
Throughout the century there was a deluge of periodical essays. The periodical essay remained the most popular, if not the dominant, literary form. Men as different as Pope, Swift, Dr. Johnson, and Goldsmith found the periodical essay an eligible medium. As a matter of fact it was, unlike the novel for example, the only literary form which was ...
Essays
Abstract. This chapter examines Johnson's achievements as an essayist in relation to the established conventions of the periodical essay. With the Rambler, Johnson restored the periodical essay to its once-prominent place in English literary culture by elevating its moral seriousness and emphasizing its aptness as a vehicle for literary criticism.. The success of the series spurred a revival ...
Periodical Essay
Periodical Essay - Definition & Meaning. The periodical essay is called 'periodical' because the periodical essays appeared in journals and magazines which appeared periodically in the eighteenth century. It flourished in the 18th century and died in the same century. Its aim was public rather than private. Its object was social reformation.
Periodical Origins & Implications of 'Essays and Reviews'
periodical of sorts. What, after all, is a periodical? A periodical is a collection of "essays and reviews" by several authors, cumulating into a volume or volumes, issued at stated intervals of time. Essays and Reviews obviously meets the first part of this definition. When we examine its history, we will find elements of the second part.
What is and How To Write a Periodical Essay
Periodical essay papers are a journey or journal through one's eye or characters develop based on series of events accordingly. Essay papers based on periodical is affected by century, culture, language and belief of the community, showing the mirror of their age, the reflection of their thinking. How literature acts as a medium in daily's ...
Periodical literature
Periodical literature. A periodical literature (also called a periodical publication or simply a periodical) is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar example is a newspaper, but a magazine or a journal are also examples of periodicals. These publications cover a wide variety of topics, from ...
Periodical Essay of 18th Century
#periodicalessays #addison #steele #spectator #tatler #tutorialsofenglishliteratureIn this video, I have discussed the genre of periodical essay that develop...
The Periodical Essay and Journal of The 18th Century
The periodical Essay forms a special branch of the 18 th century English prose. In fact, it was entirely a new kind of development in the field of prose writing. In this regard, it is imperative to know why was the term 'Periodical Essay' used for this genre of writing. It is called 'periodical' because these essays appeared in journals ...
Evolution of Periodical Essays: From Tatler to Spectator
The Spectator was published daily and consisted of a single essay on a topic usually having to do with conduct or public behavior and contained no political news. The Spectator was narrated by the fictional persona, Mr. Spectator, with some help from the six members Spectator Club. While The Tatler introduced the form of the periodical essay ...
Periodical Definition & Meaning
periodic table; published with a fixed interval between the issues or numbers; published in, characteristic of, or connected with a periodical… See the full definition Menu Toggle
PERIODICAL
PERIODICAL meaning: 1. a magazine or newspaper, especially on a serious subject, that is published regularly: 2. a…. Learn more.
PERIODICAL
PERIODICAL definition: 1. a magazine or newspaper, especially on a serious subject, that is published regularly: 2. a…. Learn more.
Periodical Essay Definition And Examples
Periodical Essay Definition And ExamplesPeriodical Essay Definition And Examples 2. Why Did The Great Chicago Fire Occurred In 1871 The Great Chicago Fire occurred in 1871. The first spark of the fire began in a nearby family barn. Uncontrolled, the blaze lasted a few days, burning a large part of the city. After the fire was put out, Chicago ...