Richard Steele and the "Pattern of Genteel Comedy"

After the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695, the amount of literary periodicals and propaganda created to influence elections notably increased for both pro- and anti-government sentiment. Richard Steele, John Tutchin, Delarivier Manley, and Daniel Defore, all were charged at different times for seditious libel for their political writings. Because of a proliferation of pirated editions, the desire of authors to control their works through copyright resulted in the Act for the Encouragement of Learning in 1709, while the 1712 Stamp Act targeted newspapers and pamphlet publications in an indirect form of censorship. The trial of Henry Sacheverell for preaching and publishing against the Toleration Act created intense interest and prompted further publications.

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Richard Steele and the Rise of Sentiment’s Empire

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science - The Discourse of Sensibility ◽

10.1007/978-3-319-02702-9_2 ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 25-42

Author(s):

Bridget Orr

Keyword(s):

Richard Steele

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The Correspondence of Richard Steele.

Modern Language Notes ◽

10.2307/2911371 ◽

1944 ◽

Vol 59 (1) ◽

pp. 69

Author(s):

Walter Graham ◽

Rae Blanchard

Keyword(s):

Richard Steele

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THE CHRISTIAN HERO BY RICHARD STEELE: A BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Library ◽

10.1093/library/s4-x.1.61 ◽

1929 ◽

Vol s4-X (1) ◽

pp. 61-72

Author(s):

RAE BLANCHARD

Keyword(s):

Richard Steele

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Sociability and Polite Improvement in Addison’s Periodicals

10.1093/oso/9780198814030.003.0008 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 142-163

Author(s):

Markman Ellish

Keyword(s):

Social Reform ◽

Public Culture ◽

Women Readers ◽

Tea Consumption ◽

The Public ◽

Richard Steele ◽

Significant Extension ◽

Periodical Essays ◽

The Spectator

Addison argued in his periodical essays that the distinctive sociability of the coffee house was especially, if not uniquely, polite, rational, and civic, and as such, an important metaphor and location for Addison’s social reform. Addison developed his conception of coffee-house sociability in dialogue with Richard Steele, but while Steele argued that emulation of virtuous behaviour in neighbourly communities was sufficient guarantor of the polite and rational reformation of public culture, Addison repeatedly toyed with a more regulated model in which an arbiter or censor moderated coffee-house behaviour. In The Spectator, Addison had identified women readers as an important commercial and ideological opportunity. While women of the polite and middling classes bore the weight of Addison’s reformist expectations, such women were excluded from the public sociability of the coffee house. In recognition of this impasse, Addison and Steele addressed a series of essays to the tea table, a form of sociability in which women and female manners were dominant. These essays develop an innovative construction of tea-table sociability located in a fluid zone between public sociability and private domesticity, centred around tea consumption, polite conversation, and reading essays from The Spectator. The tea table was, accordingly, a significant extension and revision of their theory of public sociability.

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