The Tatler, Volume 1

The Tatler reinvented the essay in 1709, and this volume captures the explosive first act of that revolution. Richard Steele, writing through his fictional alter ego Isaac Bickerstaff, deployed wit as a weapon against the absurdities of London society: pretentious beaux, fraudulent astrologers, bombastic theatre critics, and lovesick fools all come under his precise and hilarious scrutiny. These aren't mere sketches; they're surgical strikes at the anxieties and hypocrisies of early 18th-century England. Steele claimed he wrote partly for women, a radical move that expanded the audience for periodical essays beyond coffee-house men. The result was a form that could be serious and satirical in the same breath, that could mock a fop and champion genuine feeling in adjacent paragraphs. Reading The Tatler now is watching modern English prose invent itself in real time.