The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 / With Translations and Index for the Series

A lively series of short essays and sketches, issued as daily periodical pieces, offers reflections on manners, taste, literature, and public life through a cultured, gently ironic observer. Contributions alternate between two collaborators and range from moral instruction and social criticism to literary commentary, theatrical and artistic notice, character sketches, and humorous anecdotes. Many pieces use anecdote and polite satire to encourage civility, good humour, and refined conversation while diagnosing follies of fashion and affectation. Collected into three volumes with supplementary notes and indices, the material maps the habits and cultural debates of early eighteenth-century urban society.