Addressed to a friend in the country, Gay’s little 1711 pamphlet reports on the periodical essays then engrossing London, above all Steele’s Tatler and the new Spectator. This edition adds excerpts from Abel Boyer’s The English Theophrastus (1702), character sketches of coxcombs and talkers at Will’s coffee-house, with a modern introduction.
A small window on Queen Anne’s London and the birth of the English essay. Download the free EPUB.