The Spectator, Volume 1

About this book

In March 1711, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele began publishing The Spectator, a short essay that appeared every day except Sunday. Its imaginary author, Mr Spectator, a silent observer who watches London life from the coffee houses, writes about manners, fashion, marriage, the theatre and the opera, and introduces a club of characters, the most famous of whom is the old country gentleman Sir Roger de Coverley. Their aim, Addison wrote, was to enliven morality with wit and to temper wit with morality.

Context and significance

The Spectator, whose essays were read aloud in coffee houses across Britain, set a model for English prose and for journalism, and it was still read as a school classic in the nineteenth century. This first volume of Henry Morley's edition contains the opening numbers. The coffee houses where it was read are described in All About Coffee.

About the author