Joseph addision (1672-1719) and Richard steele ( 1672-1729) lived rich lives on their own, but here we will briefly talk about them together as a way of introducing the collabarative journalism for which they are how best remembered the esaay, Tatler and The spectator born just a few weekz apart Addison and steele know each other from the age of thirteen, and they also overlapped at oxford. Both of them have political and literart ambitions. By all accounts Addision and steele have very different personalities. Addision had many friends and semm to have been brilliant at getting influential people to support and help him. But his personal demeanor was serios and he wrote cato that is rarely staged now but was a staple of the repertory for decades. Steele was a more a journalist at heart and his plays are all comedies and a lot of people seemed to be unable to take steele very seriosly : he was notorious for running up big debts and was often mocked in the public press of the period. The early eighteenth century,  journalism of joseph addison and Richard steele remains an enternaing look into the attitudes, tastes and styles of their period.

Joseph addision and The spectator

Addision contributed essays to three journals, The tatler, The spectator and The Guardian, which we started with the assistance of his friend, steele. The first number of The spectator, appeared on March 1, 1711. "In new magazine politics and news, as such, were ignored; it was a literary magazines, pure ans simple, and its entire contents considered of a single light essay. It was a crazy venture at the time, but its instant success proved that men were eager for some literary expression of the new social ideals.

Richard steele The Tatler

Steele, an original genius, founded The Tatler (1709) which was inspired by defoe's The Review. It is the first of the long line of eighteenth century periodical essays. Expounding the purpose of The Tatler, he wrote: The general purpose of this paper is to exoposr the false parts of life, to pull off the disguises of cunning, vanity and affectations, and to recommend general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and our behaviour, "Its scope was comprehensive. contained accounts of gallantry, pleasure and entertainment, poetry, learning, foreign and domestic news. Steele treated everything that was going on in the town. He paints as a social humorist of the whole age of Queen Anne - the political and literary disputes, the fine gentlemen and ladies, the character of men, the humours of society, the new book, the new play; we live in the very streets ans drawing rooms of Old London.