This volume offers a selection of essays from The Tatler and The Spectator (1709-1714), together with documents that have been carefully chosen to put these periodical papers into the social and historical contexts of Joseph Addison's and Richard Steele's eighteenth century. Including excerpts from other periodicals such as The Guardian, The London Spy, and The Female Tatler, advertisements from The Tatler and The Spectator, and selections by Defoe, Ward, Flecknoe, Gay, Mandeville, Pope, and Swift, the documents focus special attention on the market of public opinion, commerce and finance, fashioning taste, and fashioning gender.