SOURCE: “The Making of Mr. Spectator,” in Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 1, March 1977, pp. 21-39.

In following essay, Furtwangler contends that Mr. Spectator, the fictional editorial voice of the Spectator, was a “didactic figure” designed to promote the journal's “identification of moral improvement with reading improvement.”

Addison and Steele had a very practical reason for creating the fictitious editors of their periodical works: canny self-protection. Neither Addison the rising politician nor Steele the ambitious soldier-turned-Gazetteer could well afford to entertain a broad public or moralize in his own name. Yet from the broad leaves of this prudent disguise there grew a new blossom of art. Other early editors had hidden behind the titles of their journals, hoping to dodge the abundant risks of plain-spoken publishing or to achieve an authoritative tone with little effort. But in Isaac Bickerstaff of the Tatler Steele developed a full-blown alter ego, complete...