The Rise of Literary Journalism in the Eighteenth Century: Anxious Employment

by Italia; Iona

• ISBN13: 9780415343923
• ISBN10: 0415343925
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-04-19
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Recent years have witnessed a heightened interest in eighteenth-century literary journalism and in eighteenth-century popular culture. This book provides an account of the early periodical as a literary genre. It traces the development of journalism from the 1690s to the 1760s, covering a range of publications by well-known writers and obscure hacks. The book's central theme is the struggle of eighteenth-century journalists to attain literary respectability and the strategies by which editors sought to improve the literary and social status of their publications.

Author Biography

Iona Italia is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of East Anglia.

Table of Contents

Preface and acknowledgements	ix
Notes on the text	xi
Introduction: the rise of the periodical	1	(205)
1 'Censor-General of Great Britain': the Tatler and the editor as social monitor	23	(26)
2 'The Conversation of my Drawing-Room': the female editor and the public sphere in the Female Tatler	49	(17)
3 'In Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-Tables, and in Coffee-Houses': the Spectator and the shift from the editorial club to the club of correspondents	66	(27)
4 'Faction and Nonsense': the rivalry between Common Sense and the Nonsense of Common Sense	93	(17)
5 Inventor or Plagiarist? Edward Cave and the first magazine	110	(13)
6 Polite, genteel, elegant: the Female Spectator and the editor's pretensions to gentility	123	(17)
7 'Writing like a teacher': Johnson as moralist in the Rambler	140	(25)
8 'A becoming sensibility': the Old Maid and the sentimental periodical	165	(13)
9 'Studies proper for women': the Lady's Museum and the periodical as an educational tool	178	(28)
10 'Buried among the essays upon liberty, eastern tales, and cures for the bite of a mad dog': Oliver Goldsmith and the essayist in the age of magazines	206	(17)
Notes	223	(5)
Bibliography	228	(12)
Index	240