In the following essay, Pallares-Burke describes how admiration for the Spectator quickly spread beyond England, spawning imitations throughout Europe. She also discusses how the journal's influence lasted long after it ceased publication.

In the essay that follows, Knight considers the linking of morality and economics in the Spectator, maintaining that the journal delineated “the workings of ethics through an economic order in which wealth, achievement, and status become public representations of moral goodness.”

In the essay that follows, Dykstal offers a Marxist analysis of the Spectator's role in defining “taste” as an “organizing principle of the public sphere,” in which private rectitude is publicly recognized. In this formulation, the critic contends, taste “rests, ultimately, not on the private apprehension of beauty but on the public defense of it.”

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.”

In the essay that follows, Berry examines how satire was used and developed in the Spectator, primarily by Joseph Addison. The critic asserts that Addison felt that legitimate satire must be good-natured, based in morality, and used “for the Benefit of Mankind.”

In the essay that follows, Bond analyzes Addison's efforts in the Spectator to redefine the scope and methods of literary criticism.

In this essay, first presented at a 1976 symposium, Winton examines Steele's editorial direction of the Tatler and the Spectator. The critic maintains that Steele introduced a number of innovations into print journalism, most notably the letters-to-the-editor feature, which permitted an unprecedented interaction between writer and audience.

In this essay, Dwyer analyzes the moral perspective promulgated by Addison and Steele through the persona of Mr. Spectator. In response to the ethical confusion of English society, this character, Dwyer contends, “attempted to present virtue and contentment in a clearer, basically classical, light in the pages of his papers.”

In the following excerpt, France discusses the role of the Spectator in the development of the essay form, noting the characteristic “blend of seriousness and ease, Christianity and worldliness” in the pieces printed in the journal.