… here and again frequently commented on the stage which he saw as ‘the Seat of Wit’. 7 The periodical also made use of letters from readers (in one case, Steele used his own love letters to his wife), 8 and therefore contributed significantly to the fashion for epistolary narratives as a vehicle for …
… new essays. Epistolarity was one way of staging and enforcing harmonious sociability. The journals often mixed genuine letters and forged ones ; The Spectator banned gossip and personal satire 5 while The Free-Thinker fixed the …
… novelist, was one of the first to authorize polemical discourse in his periodical, The Review (1704-1713). Many men of letters, such as Bolingbroke or Jonathan Swift, collaborate d to the periodical by sending texts and works. The Defoe …