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Publication Date
1-13-2026
Description
Studies of the eighteenth-century periodical have long tended to understand the form according to the period’s own insistence on adhering to and promoting politeness. In contrast, this collection reads for impoliteness, revealing a more nuanced, granular, and dynamic view of eighteenth-century periodicals such as Addison and Steele’s popular The Spectator, and a fuller sense of their value within the societies that produced and consumed them. By inverting the traditional focus, this volume promotes a new history of the periodical characterized not as highbrow gatekeeper of literary taste, but as incongruent, idiosyncratic, and impolite. Impolite Periodicals thus brings together a range of perspectives on eighteenth-century periodical publication, not simply to argue that periodicals could be impolite, but to explore how readings of their potential impoliteness might affect our understanding of their literary and social significance. This collection relishes and lingers on signs of rudeness, inconsistency, impurity, and failure.
With an afterword by Manushag N. Powell.
Keywords
The Female Tatler, The Spectator, The British Magazine, Terrae Filius, James Boswell, Mr. Honeycomb, Eighteenth-century periodicals, politeness, impoliteness, Richard Watts, Lawrence Klein, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, eighteenth-century satire, The Tatler, polite wit, Society of Ladies, The Guardian, The Examiner, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, The Free-Holder, Eidolon, The Englishman, Whiggery, Shaftesbury, Islam, Orientalism, exotic, the Christian Conjurer, Visions of Mirzah, xenophobia, eighteenth-century politics, Robert Walpole, Mary Wartley Montagu, The Craftsman, Hyp-Doctor, The Nonsense of Common-Sense, Gentleman’s Magazine, language of obligation, The Dunciad, Della Cruscans, Robert Merry, the World, the Oracle, Mary Robinson, Catch Club, To Anacreon in Heaven, Morning Chronicle, Pair of Breeches, George Colman, Enlightenment, London Terrae-filius, Terrae-Filius: Or, theSecret History of the University of Oxford, Roger de Coverley, Andrew Freeport, banter, Henry Fielding, True Patriot, The Jacobite’s Journal, Henry Pelham, Hypochondriack, mutual happiness of social discourse, Middlesex Sessions, pocket edition, eighteenth-century printing, 1712 Stamp Taxvulgar, Jacob Tonson, marketing, wrapping, lavatory paper, Old Bailey Proceedings, cuttings, linguistic correctness, virtue, Joseph Priestley, grammar, English language guides, Ann Fisher, Robert Lowth, grammarian, errors, writing style, Thomas Sheridan, courtesy, manners, condescension, political, Ros Ballaster, Roland Barthes, Isaac Bickerstaff, humor, humour, offence, offense
Rights
This collection copyright © 2026 by Bucknell University Press. Individual chapters copyright © 2026 in the names of their authors.
Language
eng
ISBN
9781684485765