The Spectator by Sir Richard Steele

First published: 1711-1712, 1714

Type of work: Essays

The Work:

Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s The Spectator was among the most popular and influential literary periodicals in England in the eighteenth century. Begun on March 1, 1711, this one-page essay sheet was published six days a week, Monday through Saturday, and reached 555 issues by its last issue on December 6, 1712. Each issue was numbered, the articles were unsigned, and many had mottoes from classical authors. The Spectator’s end was brought about by a combination of the other interests of its authors and by a rate increase in the taxes that were levied on paper. In 1714, The Spectator was revived from June through December by Addison and two other writers, who had occasionally contributed to the original publication. Reading The Spectator yields a vivid portrait of London life in the first decades of the eighteenth century.

The Spectator, like its equally famous predecessor, The Tatler (1709 to 1712), was the creation of Sir Richard Steele, who combined a life of politics with a writing career as a poet, a playwright, and a literary journalist. Steele became a member of Parliament, was knighted by King George I in 1715, and achieved success as a dramatist with his play The Conscious Lovers in 1722. Using the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff, Steele provided lively stories and reports on London society through The Tatler, which attracted male and female readers. Addison, already popular as poet, was also a playwright and a writer on miscellaneous topics who held a series of government appointments. He contributed material to The Tatler and then formed a collaborative relationship with Steele to write for The Spectator. While The Tatler featured both news and short essays on topical matters, The Spectator, with the established readers of The Tatler as its primary buyers, was composed of one long essay on the social scene or a group of fictive letters to the editor that gave Addison and Steele a forum for moral or intellectual commentary. This was presented in the periodical by the specially created, fictional social observer, “Mr. Spectator.”

To give the essays structure, Steele created the Spectator Club and presented the character of Sir Roger De Coverly, a fifty-six-year-old bachelor and country gentleman, as its central spokesman. Other members of this fictional group included a merchant, Sir Andrew Freeport, a lawyer, a soldier, a clergyman, and a socialite, Will Honeycomb, who contributed gossip and interesting examples of social behavior to Mr. Spectator. Although Steele ultimately did not use the Spectator Club as a device as often as he apparently anticipated, the De Coverly essays were the best recognized and most popular section of The Spectator. In later literature of the century, characters similar to those created by Steele for the club appeared in novels and political periodicals. Through De Coverly and Freeport, Addison and Steele are able to contrast the political views of the Tory and Whig parties and, through Honeycomb, to satirize the ill effects of an overly social life on personal morality and good judgment.

The first number of The Spectator begins with Addison’s general introduction of Mr. Spectator to his readers. As Mr. Spectator explains, readers want to know something about an author, even if the information is general:

Thus I live in the World, rather as a Spectator of Mankind, than as one of the Species . . . as a Looker-on, which is the Character I intend to preserve in this Paper.

As for keeping some personal details to himself, Mr. Spectator notes that knowing his real name, his age, and his place of residence would spoil his ability to act as a nonpartisan observer. By issue 10 (written by Addison), Mr. Spectator reports to his readers that the periodical has a daily circulation of three thousand papers, and, by its height in 1712, nine thousand issues of it are sold daily in London. In addition to essays on a single theme, some issues used letters from readers (written by friends of Addison and Steele), which created the impression of a widespread circulation while offering a means for Mr. Spectator to address specific social problems. Issue 20, for example, written by Steele, is based on a young lady’s note about men who stare at women in church. Mr. Spectator gives a detailed and courteous reply that contrasts “male impudence,” as he labels it, among the English, the Irish, and the Scots. Several subsequent issues, such as 48 and 53, are composed entirely of these sorts of letters, which become a typical way for the authors to discuss male and female social behavior and, usually, female fashion. The importance of conversation in society is profiled in issue 49, also by Steele, on the role of the coffeehouse as “the Place of Rendezvous to all that live near it, who are thus turned to relish calm and ordinary life.” Besides moral and amusing accounts, The Spectator featured short pieces of prose fiction with developed characters, plots, dialogue in some cases, and themes specific to the story itself. In issue 50, Addison reworks an idea about cultural encounters that was originally proposed by Jonathan Swift for The Tatler in his story of the Indian kings. Earlier, in issue 11, Steele tells the tale of Inkle and Yarico. This story concerns an Indian girl, Yarico, who unwisely, though sincerely, befriends an English merchant, Thomas Inkle, who is more interested in commercial gain than in friendship and love.

Issues 106 to 131, which cover June and July, 1711, form the De Coverly papers of the periodical to which both Addison and Steele are contributors. Since they both created Sir Roger daily, his character evolves into something slightly different from Steele’s original portrait in issue 2, as the gentleman’s eccentricities and unworldliness make him a comic contribution to literature on the scale of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote. In issue 106, Mr. Spectator accepts Sir Roger’s invitation to spend a month with him in the country. Once there, Mr. Spectator is impressed by the freedoms of unstructured country life and the many amusements available to pass each day. Over the course of these letters, Mr. Spectator meets Sir Roger’s loyal servants, his chaplain, and an assortment of rural neighbors.

The broad outlines of country life sketched by Mr. Spectator would have been familiar to the London readers as many had country homes of their own, relatives outside London, and opportunities to travel into the cooler northern climates in the summer months. There is more to these lively, pictorial entertainments, however. Through Mr. Spectator, Addison and Steele are able to comment on the positive effects of good household management, the shortcomings of the aristocracy, the benefits of commerce, the landed gentry’s role in maintaining social order, the differences between the fear and the shame of poverty, the signs of good breeding—behavior, conversation, and dress—as they are found in the country, and the reach of party politics outside London. The brief accounts of Sir Roger’s unrequited love for a “perverse country widow” allow Steele, who wrote issues 113 and 118, to continue his conversation on love and marriage initiated in The Tatler and carried on in The Spectator. Issue 116, contributed by Eustace Budgell, who later wrote with Addison on the continuation of the paper, offers an amusing and detailed story of Sir Roger’s hunt and an opportunity for Mr. Spectator to consider the fickleness of human compassion. At the end of the chase, Sir Roger directs that the hunted rabbit be freed to live its life in its garden as it gave them all good sport. In issue 117, written by Addison, Mr. Spectator relates the story of Moll White, an insensible old woman believed by many, including Sir Roger, to be a witch. The lack of understanding of the plight of the elderly, abandoned poor is the theme of this more serious essay. Placed back to back as these stories are, the reader quickly sees the contradictions in Sir Roger’s attitude toward humans and his attitude toward animals, which sounds a cautionary note to the audience. To complete the cycle, issue 131 announces Mr. Spectator’s departure, and issue 132 describes his memorable journey back to London. The entire story of Sir Roger includes four papers on his visit to the sights of London (issues 269, 329, 335, and 383) and one on his death (issue 517) on October 23, 1712. Addison did not want the character to be imitated by other, later periodical writers.

In all, the De Coverly papers are representative of the themes, scope, and treatment of the subjects of The Spectator as a whole. These essays also show the balanced style of The Spectator, which is maintained through the careful craftsmanship of Addison and of Steele. Neither writer concentrates solely on writing either topical or moral essays; they write both with equal facility and in complementary styles.

Since the purpose of The Spectator is to allow its readers to observe all parts of life, there are a great many topics covered to different degrees in the periodical. One important subject is literary criticism, treated in essays on tragedy (issues 39, 40, 42, and 44), on poetry (issues 70 and 74), on comedy and wit (issues 23, 28, 59-63, 65, 270, and 446), and, interspersed between issues 267 and 463, concerning extended analyses of the writing of John Milton. The Spectator’s essays on literature, popular entertainment, and refinement set the standards of taste for the readers, while providing prose composition models and examples of methods of characterization suggestive to other writers. Another series of essays is written in praise of scientific discovery and in response to popular pseudoscientific ideas on animal intelligence and on the supernatural. Addison, who composed many of the issues on science, is careful to balance his arguments for the power of science with references to the power of God, as shown in issue 420, in which he discusses the advances in knowledge offered by the microscope and the way that scientific information can be used to heighten faith.

Personal and public morality is also a theme of great import in The Spectator. For example, Steele writes on lewd conduct in issues 155, 266, and 274 and on the dangers of plays with situations in which immoral behavior is rewarded in issues 51 and 208. He also uses the paper to stress the need for parental responsibility (issues 192, 320, 437, and 479) and for marital fidelity. Addison also writes on religious and philosophical topics with his five hymns, which appear in issues 441, 453, 465, 489, and 513, reminding readers of his popularity as a poet.

There are, of course, many papers celebrating the diverse characteristics of human nature and numerous portraits of individuals with distinctive traits found throughout The Spectator. An interest in and curiosity about people as individuals are hallmarks of the eighteenth century, which emphasized, through the philosophy of Enlightenment, the social roles of humans in their societies.

Issue 555, written by Steele and published on December 6, 1712, brought The Spectator to a close. In this issue, Mr. Spectator acknowledges the contribution of Addison to the success and variety of the papers in an indirect way and names seven other writers who he claims contributed the letters that enlivened the conversations in its pages. He also announces the impending publication of The Spectator in seven volumes, and he clearly blames the higher taxes for driving the paper out of business. In the summer of 1714, Addison, with Budgell and Thomas Tickell, revived The Spectator and published issues through issue 635. These additional essays were collected for volume 8 of the complete Spectator, published in September, 1715. Steele, after The Spectator ended, started a political essay periodical, The Guardian, in March, 1713, which was succeeded by The Englishman in October, 1713. It went into a second series before its end in November, 1715. Donald F. Bond edited the standard edition of The Spectator (1965), which has an extensive introduction and identifications of the issues written by Steele, Addison, and the other contributors.

The Spectator was frequently republished throughout the nineteenth century and could be found in many home libraries after 1712. It was an unparalleled accomplishment in eighteenth century periodical journalism and was highly influential on many later English writers. The congenial eye of Mr. Spectator touched on all parts of ordinary life; The Spectator compares to Samuel Pepys’s Diary (1825) and James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D. (1791) as a work representative of the eighteenth century within cultural history.

Bibliography

Bloom, Edward, and Lillian Bloom. Educating the Audience: Addison, Steele, and Eighteenth-Century Culture. Los Angeles: William Clark Andrews Memorial Library, University of California, 1984. A study of The Spectator providing a detailed perspective on the readers of the periodical and how the authors appealed to them.

Bond, Richmond P., ed. Studies in the Early English Periodical. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1957. This indispensable history of the eighteenth century periodical provides the terminology currently in use to describe literary essays and magazines.

Dammer, Richard H. Richard Steele. Boston: Twayne, 1982. This biography in the Twayne’s English Authors series argues that Steele used themes from an earlier moral tract, The Christian Hero (1701), as a unifying feature in his essays for The Spectator.

Ketcham, Michael D. Transparent Designs: Reading, Performance, and Form in “The Spectator” Papers. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985. A significant and careful study of Addison’s and Steele’s literary styles.

Mackie, Erin Skye. Market à la Mode: Fashion, Commodity, and Gender in the “Tatler” and the “Spectator.” Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Mackie examines both of the periodicals edited by Addison and Steele, focusing on how they covered fashion in their role as arbiters of eighteenth century English taste. Places the periodicals within the commercial context of publishing and describes how their fashion reportage expressed contemporary ideas about gender identity and cultural standards.

Newman, Donald J., ed. “The Spectator”: Emerging Discourses. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. Examines how The Spectator served as a manual to help the emerging middle class organize its life. The essays discuss the periodical’s ideas about children, literature, education, femininity, death, and other topics.

Winton, Calhoun. Captain Steele: The Early Career of Richard Steele. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964. The first of Winton’s two-book biography of Steele, covering his early career between 1690 and 1714. Half of this volume is on Steele’s periodical journalism and The Spectator.