Addison and Steele

Joseph Addison and Richard Steele — creators of The Tatler (1709) and The Spectator (1711-12), the periodical essays that invented the modern English essay form and created the 'public sphere.'

The invention of the public sphere: Addison and Steele's Spectator (published daily, read in coffeehouses, circulated among the emerging bourgeoisie) created a new form of civic discourse — rational, polite, accessible, non-partisan. Habermas identifies The Spectator as foundational to the bourgeois public sphere. The essay form they developed (short, readable, combining observation and moral reflection) became the template for the modern newspaper column, literary essay, and eventually blogging. 'Mr. Spectator' (the fictional persona of The Spectator) is the first major fictional persona deployed in non-fiction journalism.