define periodical essay in literature

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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The Rise of the Literary Periodical

In the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, what has been called the emerging ‘public sphere’ saw the rise of printed pamphlets and journals catering to novel aspirations, anxieties and interests of the people…

In the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution , what has been called the emerging ‘public sphere’ saw the rise of printed pamphlets and journals catering to novel aspirations, anxieties and interests of the people.

The late 17th and early 18th century witnessed the transformation of printed journals through the amalgamation of not just news but also socio-political commentaries, opinion essays, letters and sometimes even fiction and poetry – into a new kind of publication called the periodical.

A man named Richard Steele is often credited with having popularised, if not invented the literary form of periodical essays. Yet, scholars have shown that Motteux’s Gentleman’s Journal and Daniel Defoe’s Review were the true predecessors of Steele’s widely read periodicals The Tatler (1709-1711) and The Spectator (1711-1712). The great German philosopher, Jürgen Habermas argues that these periodicals started by Steele and his friend Joseph Addison played an immense role in the public sphere by acting as the linkage between the British coffeehouses , the political domain of rational-critical debate and formation of a ‘public opinion’.

Periodical literature also contributed majorly to the development of modern authorship and acquainted the readers to the authors who lived and interacted among them. The Tatler and The Spectator, like other popular periodicals, used a mode of invasive ‘spectation’ that involved not just the usage of sight but also other bodily senses. Professor Anthony Pollock argues that The Spectator makes a deliberate transition from the conversational surveillance towards visual one. He writes “Addison and Steele’s personae characteristically do not intervene, they withdraw.” While in The Tatler, the reader gets a sense of the author actively desiring to say something, Mr Spectator’s most amusing idiosyncrasy is his taciturnity. Mr. Spectator thus presented a masculine mode of transcendent reporting, writing more than gossip – contributing to the literary posture of spectatorship which greatly appealed to its astoundingly large reader base.

Another development during this period was the increase in wealth and leisure of the English middle classes and the improvement in women’s education that turned several women into readers. Though, undoubtedly the early modern public sphere was dominated by men, a large number of publishers jumped at the opportunity to expand their female readership. Starting with John Dunton’s Athenian Mercury (1691– 97), many periodicals began devoting one or more issues (or sections) to topics that were likely to please and attract the ladies. A short-lived experiment was the renaming of the October issue of the Gentleman’s Journal, as ‘The Lady’s Journal’. Amusingly, the first imitators of The Tatler were ostensibly women who published The Female Tatler three times a week for about a year. Although The Female Tatler claimed to have been penned by “A Society of Ladies”, in reality, the author was a man called Bernard Mandeville. In later decades, when women actually began publishing journals, unlike ‘Men’s Periodicals’, their themes remained mostly domestic and rarely political.

Although, most of these periodicals were read in coffeehouses, many were also delivered at homes and book stores. The authors of these popular periodicals, like Steele and Addison, not just frequented the coffeehouses but even indicated their sources vividly. For instance, in the premier issue of The Tatler, the author mentions “All accounts of gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment shall be under the article of White’s Chocolate-house; Poetry, under that of Will’s Coffee-house; Learning, under the title of Grecian; Foreign and Domestic News you will have from Saint James’s Coffee-house; and what else I have to offer on any other subject shall be dated from my own Apartment.” Interestingly, after being printed in London, these periodicals did not remain restricted to the city but were also disseminated in various provinces like Oxford and Dublin, where they enjoyed large readership.

The advent of the age of periodicals cannot be simply associated publications related to the news revolution of the 17th century. Many of the 17th century newspapers, often disseminated in coffeehouses were seen as a major source of threat by the ruling class. The crown attempted to suppress these ‘dangerous’ publications through the Licensing Act of 1662 which gave the state a monopoly on the printing of news, making The London Gazette the kingdom’s only official newspaper post 1665. Although this was true on paper, in reality several unofficial publications were printed, distributed and widely read. There were instances, such as the Algiers leak case, when sensitive information was leaked by State office workers to coffeehouses which resulted in a breach of national security and put coffeehouses owners and newspaper publishers in an unfavourable position. Through various laws, the Crown made numerous attempts to restrain the spread of seditious and irreligious newspapers but was never totally successful.

The content and literary style of the popular periodicals were very different from the newspapers. As historian Brian Cowan notes, Steele and Addison, like Defoe disapproved of news mongering and never supported irresponsible interference in matters of the State. The new public sphere was therefore not one that obsessed solely over news and gossip. The periodicals were becoming an important medium not for indecent, heated debates but for refined, socio-political and moral discussions – creating stable, civilised and courteous public spaces.

Disha Ray is a student of History at St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi. She is particularly interested in questions of gender and minority histories.

Published: July 14th, 2021.

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The Essay: History and Definition

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"One damned thing after another" is how Aldous Huxley described the essay: "a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything."

As definitions go, Huxley's is no more or less exact than Francis Bacon's "dispersed meditations," Samuel Johnson's "loose sally of the mind" or Edward Hoagland's "greased pig."

Since Montaigne adopted the term "essay" in the 16th century to describe his "attempts" at self-portrayal in prose , this slippery form has resisted any sort of precise, universal definition. But that won't an attempt to define the term in this brief article.

In the broadest sense, the term "essay" can refer to just about any short piece of nonfiction  -- an editorial, feature story, critical study, even an excerpt from a book. However, literary definitions of a genre are usually a bit fussier.

One way to start is to draw a distinction between articles , which are read primarily for the information they contain, and essays, in which the pleasure of reading takes precedence over the information in the text . Although handy, this loose division points chiefly to kinds of reading rather than to kinds of texts. So here are some other ways that the essay might be defined.

Standard definitions often stress the loose structure or apparent shapelessness of the essay. Johnson, for example, called the essay "an irregular, indigested piece, not a regular and orderly performance."

True, the writings of several well-known essayists ( William Hazlitt and Ralph Waldo Emerson , for instance, after the fashion of Montaigne) can be recognized by the casual nature of their explorations -- or "ramblings." But that's not to say that anything goes. Each of these essayists follows certain organizing principles of his own.

Oddly enough, critics haven't paid much attention to the principles of design actually employed by successful essayists. These principles are rarely formal patterns of organization , that is, the "modes of exposition" found in many composition textbooks. Instead, they might be described as patterns of thought -- progressions of a mind working out an idea.

Unfortunately, the customary divisions of the essay into opposing types --  formal and informal, impersonal and familiar  -- are also troublesome. Consider this suspiciously neat dividing line drawn by Michele Richman:

Post-Montaigne, the essay split into two distinct modalities: One remained informal, personal, intimate, relaxed, conversational and often humorous; the other, dogmatic, impersonal, systematic and expository .

The terms used here to qualify the term "essay" are convenient as a kind of critical shorthand, but they're imprecise at best and potentially contradictory. Informal can describe either the shape or the tone of the work -- or both. Personal refers to the stance of the essayist, conversational to the language of the piece, and expository to its content and aim. When the writings of particular essayists are studied carefully, Richman's "distinct modalities" grow increasingly vague.

But as fuzzy as these terms might be, the qualities of shape and personality, form and voice, are clearly integral to an understanding of the essay as an artful literary kind. 

Many of the terms used to characterize the essay -- personal, familiar, intimate, subjective, friendly, conversational -- represent efforts to identify the genre's most powerful organizing force: the rhetorical voice or projected character (or persona ) of the essayist.

In his study of Charles Lamb , Fred Randel observes that the "principal declared allegiance" of the essay is to "the experience of the essayistic voice." Similarly, British author Virginia Woolf has described this textual quality of personality or voice as "the essayist's most proper but most dangerous and delicate tool."

Similarly, at the beginning of "Walden, "  Henry David Thoreau reminds the reader that "it is ... always the first person that is speaking." Whether expressed directly or not, there's always an "I" in the essay -- a voice shaping the text and fashioning a role for the reader.

Fictional Qualities

The terms "voice" and "persona" are often used interchangeably to suggest the rhetorical nature of the essayist himself on the page. At times an author may consciously strike a pose or play a role. He can, as E.B. White confirms in his preface to "The Essays," "be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter." 

In "What I Think, What I Am," essayist Edward Hoagland points out that "the artful 'I' of an essay can be as chameleon as any narrator in fiction." Similar considerations of voice and persona lead Carl H. Klaus to conclude that the essay is "profoundly fictive":

It seems to convey the sense of human presence that is indisputably related to its author's deepest sense of self, but that is also a complex illusion of that self -- an enactment of it as if it were both in the process of thought and in the process of sharing the outcome of that thought with others.

But to acknowledge the fictional qualities of the essay isn't to deny its special status as nonfiction.

Reader's Role

A basic aspect of the relationship between a writer (or a writer's persona) and a reader (the implied audience ) is the presumption that what the essayist says is literally true. The difference between a short story, say, and an autobiographical essay  lies less in the narrative structure or the nature of the material than in the narrator's implied contract with the reader about the kind of truth being offered.

Under the terms of this contract, the essayist presents experience as it actually occurred -- as it occurred, that is, in the version by the essayist. The narrator of an essay, the editor George Dillon says, "attempts to convince the reader that its model of experience of the world is valid." 

In other words, the reader of an essay is called on to join in the making of meaning. And it's up to the reader to decide whether to play along. Viewed in this way, the drama of an essay might lie in the conflict between the conceptions of self and world that the reader brings to a text and the conceptions that the essayist tries to arouse.

At Last, a Definition—of Sorts

With these thoughts in mind, the essay might be defined as a short work of nonfiction, often artfully disordered and highly polished, in which an authorial voice invites an implied reader to accept as authentic a certain textual mode of experience.

Sure. But it's still a greased pig.

Sometimes the best way to learn exactly what an essay is -- is to read some great ones. You'll find more than 300 of them in this collection of  Classic British and American Essays and Speeches .

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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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Steele is the originator of the Tattler, and joins with Addison in creating the Spectator-the two periodicals which, in the short space of less than four years, did more to influence subsequent literature than all other magazines of the century combined. On account of his talent in writing political pamphlets, Steele was awarded the position of official gazetteer. He could combine news, gossip and essays instantaneously.

Johnson’s Rambler is usually ranked as the first of the classical periodicals after The Guardian. Johnson also contributed to The Idler and The Adventurer. His style is mannered and Latinised. His is a learned prose. His vocabulary is heavy and sonorous. He is the classic of pedantic prose. Another luminary of the periodical essay is Oliver Goldsmith. He started his career as a periodical essayist with his contributions to The Bee, a weekly which did not survive its 8 th number. Among his best periodical essays mention must be made of “The City Night Piece”, “The Public Ledger”, “The Citizens of the World”, etc. Oliver Goldsmith should be remembered for his sympathetic humour, magic of his personality, simplicity, chastity and carefulness. His style is always light and refreshing. His descriptions are vivid and picturesque. He carried the personal vein of Steele, his compatriot, a step further and heralded the autobiographical manner of Charles Lamb.

Later on the romantic writers like Lamb, Hazlitt and De Quincey also contributed their essays to the periodicals of their time, but their essays are very much different in spirit of manner from those of the real practitioners of the periodical essay.

The rise of the periodical essay can be attributed to various causes such as vast growth of a reading public, rise of the middle classes, growth and development of numerous periodicals, the rise of the two political parties (the Whig and the Tory), the rise of the coffee-houses as centers of social and political life, the need of social reform and the popular reception accorded by the public to the periodical literature. The periodical essay was a very popular form of literature and communication and recreation in the eighteenth century because it was the mirror of the Augustan age in England” (A. R. Humphreys). It was the social chronicler of the time. It was particularly suited to the genius of the new patrons, because it was the literature of the bourgeoisie. It gave them what they wanted. It gave them pleasure as well as instruction. It was a delicate and sensitive synthesis of literature and journalism. It was neither too ‘literary’ to be comprehended and appreciated by the common people nor too journalistic to meet the fate of ephemeral writings. It could be read. Appreciated, and discussed at the tea-table or in the coffee-house. Its lightness and brevity were its two major popularising factors. The periodical essay, normally, covered not more than two sides of a folio half-sheet; quite often it was even shorter. Furthermore, it was suited to the moral temper of the age. It struck a delicate and rational balance between the strait-jacketed morality of the Puritan and the reckless Bohemianism of the Cavalier. In the words of A. R. Humphreys, “conventionally the code of pleasure was that of the rake: Steele and Addison wished to equate it with virtue, and virtue with religion”. Above all, the periodical essay has a wider appeal to various sections of the eighteenth century society. It appealed not only to the lovers of literature and literary criticism, but also to those who were interested in men and manners, fashions and recreation. It appealed very well to women. The authors were writing for men as well as women, said Mrs. Jane H. Jack.

The periodical essay further avoided heated religious and political controversies and maintained a balance, following generally a middle path. Mr. Spectator says in the very first issue of The Spectator: “I never espoused any party with violence, and am resolved to observe an exact neutrality between the Whigs and Tories…” It also showed a healthy interest in trade, and thus appealed to the traders and merchants too. Lastly, the periodical essay became popular due to the chaste style of its contributors. They used simple and everyday language. It covered all accounts of gallantry, pleasure and entertainment, poetry, learning, foreign and domestic news.

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Steele and Addison: the periodical essay and the rise of the domestic novel

ABSTRACT. The Review, The Tatler and The Spectator were major events in the history of English prose writing at the beginning of the eighteenth century. These publications made the periodical essay fashionable, providing a model of writing with style for many generations to come. The three main heroes of the imagination that made this project a reality were Daniel Defoe, Richard Steele and Joseph Addison. In the present paper we address main issues related with Steele’s and Addison’s pioneering work in The Tatler (April 1709–January 1711) and The Spectator (March 1711–December 1712; 1714), in order to grasp how a project that was started mainly by the wish to bring cultural, intellectual, scientific, esthetic, social, critical and philosophical matters to the masses – usually gathering in public places such as coffee-houses and chocolate houses at the beginning of the eighteenth century (a social phenomenon that today reminds one of conventions and literary clubs) – came to have such an enormous historical significance for not only the emergence of literary journalism, but even for the rise of the British domestic novel, whose exquisite form was to be established by Samuel Richardson a few decades later, in the 1740s.

Keywords: essay; journalism; Enlightenment; imaginative literature; the Spectator Club; virtue versus vice; moderation; the short story; the domestic novel; Richardson

Preda IA (2019) Steele and Addison: the periodical essay and the rise of the domestic novel. Stroe MA, ed. Creativity 3(2): 3–27. doi:10.22381/C3220201 1-Preda Size: 2.43 MB Format: PDF Preview

IOAN AUREL PREDA Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, English Department, The University of Bucharest, Romania

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Addison and Steele Q-THE PERIODICAL ESSAY

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Studies in British Literature: The Eighteenth Century. DSpace/Manakin Repository. ...

Ingo Berensmeyer

This article explores the development of English poetry in the eighteenth century in relation to the emergence of prose fiction, arguing for a less novel-centred perspective in eighteenth-century literary history and for a a more inclusive, media-oriented approach to the study of literary genres in general. It demonstrates how Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift respond to the challenges of a new media culture by a thematic shift towards 'urban realism' in the mock epic and mock georgic. On that basis, it then analyses Thomas Gray's Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard as a complex reflection on the role of poetry in competition with the novel in eighteenth-century print culture.

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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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Introduction to library research.

• Types of Periodicals
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What is a periodical?   A periodical is anything that comes out periodically. Magazines, newspapers, and journals are all periodicals. They may come out daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually, but new issues are released on a fixed schedule. While this legacy fades with the dominance of 24/7 production in the digital age, periodicity still plays an important role in scholarly publication.

Who is the audience?   Magazines, newspapers, trade journals, and academic journals are intended for different audiences.

Distinguishing content on the internet:  The stylistic cues that make it relatively easy to distinguish different types of content vanish when presented on the web. It's easy to tell the difference between an analog newspaper and scholarly journal. They look and feel very different from each other. When using information from the internet it is important to develop the skills to critically analyze the information you're presented with, rather than rely on stylistic cues to determine the quality of information you're consuming.

How to Tell if an Article is Peer Reviewed

Search by ISSN, subject, publisher, or language. Over 300,000 journals with 900 subject specialties.

Provides data points such as ISSN, publisher, language, subject, abstracting & indexing coverage, full-text database coverage, tables of contents, and reviews written by librarians. You can narrow OA results by clicking on the "Open Access" option. OA journals are also indicated with the bright blue "unlocked" icon.

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Check out this video from Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Libraries on the differences between scholarly and non-scholarly sources.

Here is a handout which may help you distinguish academic/scholarly journals from popular magazines.

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British Literature Wiki

Eighteenth Century Journalists and Periodicals

This page displays a few descriptions of journalists and the periodicals they created during the time of the Restoration and 18th century London.

Richard Steele- (1672-1729) An author who wanted to teach and impress his readers, Steele was the London Gazette editor and author of The Tatler . His writings made sure to include the reader into it’s articles and essays, and “For the rest of the century [Steele’s] first task was to devise a persona unusual enough to define [his] paper, and engaging enough to sustain it” (Damrosch 2462). Benjamin Harris – (-1720) An English writer who was jailed for accusations concerning “violating the printing and bookselling laws of King Charles II” (Brown). The works in question were his A Protestant Petition or his London Post . “Harris’ most

su ccessful venture into the book publishing field” was his The New-England Primer in 1687-16 90 (Brown). Eliza Haywood- (1693-1756) A romantic novelists who wrote “sensational romantic novels that mirrored contemporary 18th-century scandals” (Haywood). The author of The Spectator , “each number presented an essay focused on a single topic with several illustrative fictional stories interspersed” (Damrosch 2468). “ The Female Spectator continued to sell, in a four-volume collected edition, for more than two decades after its periodical run had ceased” (Damrosch 2468). Other works of Haywood include The Female Dunciad , 1729, and The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, 1753 (Haywood).

Periodicals

The London Gazette- Originally titled the Oxford Gazette and is perceived as the first real newspaper in England that was published in 1665 by the government. The Gazette was “a complete innovation, replacing the traditional format of the news-book with a half sheet folio: a two-page newspaper, set for the first time in double columns, and…for the rest of the seventeenth century this was to be the normal format for an English newspaper” (Sutherland 11).

The Tatler- A periodical that was in publication from 1709-1711 and was co-authored by Sir Richard Steele and his colleague Joseph Addison. The paper began as one separated into four sections of news but then gradually included a more essay-type style. It’s stated purpose was to inform readers of political news and to provide entertainment. “It contains news-reporting and partisan essays, championing Whig values; moral crusades, in particular against dueling and gambling; essays on contemporary manners and morals; Oriental tales; short stories; allegorical dream-visions; and readers letters” (The Tatler).

The Spectator- (1711-1713) Another periodical in which Richard Steele and Joseph Addison worked together. This was the first attempt for the two writers to publish the paper everyday for their readers. Also in this paper was the new persona they created in “Mr. Spectator” who “managed to embody and to allegorize the operations of the paper he inhabited” (Damrosch 2465). The Gentleman’s Magazine- a pamphlet produced monthly created by Edward Cave from 1731-1868. Although it contained a variety of information like the newspaper, it represented a new form of presenting news as a magazine. The writings in this magazine consisted of works from several books and other pamphlets combined, with “an ever-widening range of fresh materials: biographies, poetry, parliamentary debates” (Damrosch 2475). Samuel Johnson was among those authors who contributed their work to the magazine.

The Female Spectator- Eliza Haywood contributed to the first female newspaper titled The Female Spe

ctator which from 1744-1746 was a pamphlet periodical that circulated monthly for its readers . The Rambler- (1750-1752) A John Payne periodical with a majority of it’s essays written by Samuel Johnson. Payne’s objective was to teach his readers, and the writing dealt with how to “deal with the disappointments inherent in life and with the setbacks to ambition” (Rambler).

Return to The Newspaper and Periodicals page

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Can formal essays be considered as a literature in strict sense?

Francis Bacon wrote formal essays and Joseph Addison wrote periodical essays. (Periodical essays refers to essays that are written to be published in a periodical publication.)

The style of periodical essays is different from that of the formal essays of Bacon and Montaigne, which are almost philosophical. In Bacon the style is close-knit and aphoristic to match the concentration of thought. The journalistic essays are written in loose-knit, easy-paced and discursive style. Addressed to ordinary people, a periodical essay attempts a synthesis of experience, and allows of digression into whatever by-paths seem to answer the writer’s mood. On the other hand, formal essays are generally meant to be for professionals even though they consider the normal topics.

As the main aim of formal essays is to present one’s own thoughts on something as opposed to narration, can they be considered as part of literature?

• definition-of-literature

• 1 I’m voting to close this question because the question has an answer in our Help section: literature.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic , which specifically says we define "essays" as on-topic. Otherwise it becomes opinion-based. –  verbose Commented Feb 14, 2021 at 1:53
• I agree — questions of the form "is X literature?" are worthless, the answer is always "if you define 'literature' so as to include X, then yes, otherwise no" –  Gareth Rees Commented Feb 14, 2021 at 10:35

The short answer to this question is, "Yes, they can. It simply depends on how we define literature."

Cuddon defines literature as follows:

A vague terms which usually denotes works which belong to the major genres: epic, drama, lyric, novel, short story, ode.

Further down he adds:

However, there are many works which cannot be classified in the main literary genres which nevertheless may be regarded as literature by virtue of the excellence of their writing, their originality and their general aesthetic and artistic merits.

He then goes on to list works such as Aristotle's Poetics , Descartes's Discourse on Method , Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , Darwin's On the Origin of Species and Lytton Strachey's Queen Victoria .

What Cuddon does not mention that the concept of literature changed around the beginning of the 19th century. In Chapter 2 of Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction points out that

Prior to 1800 literature and analogous terms in other European languages meant 'writings' or 'book knowledge'. (...) And works that today are studied as literature in English or Latin classes in schools and universities were once treated not as a special kind of writing but as fine examples of the use of language and rhetoric. (...) Students were not asked to interpret them, as we now interpret literary works, seeking to explain what they are 'really about'. On the contrary, students memorized them, studied their grammar, identified their rhetorical figures and their structures or procedures of argument.

Based on this approach to literature, it would be perfectly normal to study the essays of Montaigne, Bacon and even Addison in what we now call a literature class, even though they don't fit the definition of literature given by Cuddon at the start of this answer. That definition reflects a concept of literature that originated in early 19th-century romanticism and that is restricted to imaginative writing. Culler cites Madame de Staël's On Literature Considered in Its Relations with Social Institutions , published in 1800, as an influential source of this conception, even though its roots go back to late-18th-century German romantics. [1] Based on this more restrictive definition of literature, essays would not be considered literature.

Baldick mentions an even more restrictive definition:

Even more restrictive has been the academic concentration upon poetry, drama, and fiction.

However, he immediately adds:

Until the mid-20th century, many kinds of non-fictional writing—in philosophy, history, biography, criticism, topography, science, and politics—were counted as literature; implicit in this broader usage is a definition of literature as that body of works which—for whatever reason—deserve to be preserved as part of the current reproduction of meanings within a given culture (unlike yesterday's newspaper, which belongs in the disposable category of ephemera). This seems more tenable than the later attempts to divide literature—as creative, imaginative, fictional, or non-practical—from factual writings or practically effective works of propaganda, rhetoric, or didactic writing.

The above definitions of literature attempt to use inherent characteristics as criteria for inclusion or exclusion but can't get around the observation that this is not always consistent with what we treat as literature (see e.g. Baldick's "works which ... deserve to be preserved ..."). As I discussed in a related answer , the definition of literature is something like the definition of "weed": weed is not a biological category, it is just a range of unrelated plants that we don't want in our gardens or our agricultural fields. So the question boils down to the following: Whether essays are literature or not depends on what types of text a specific culture treats as literature during a specific era . What we treat as literature has varied over time. During my school and university education, the essay has always been of secondary importance.

References:

• Baldick, Chris: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms . Second edition. Oxford University Press, 2001.
• Cuddon, J. A.: The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory . Third edition. Penguin 1992.
• Culler, Jonathan: Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction . Oxford University Press, 1997.

[1] It would be an interesting question whether Germaine de Staël was influenced by those German romantics before 1800. During her exile she lived in Germany for some time and "travelled on to Berlin, where she made the acquaintance of August Schlegel who was lecturing there on literature", but that was after 1800.

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