Born: May 1, 1672

Died: June 17, 1719

Nationality: English

Movements: Rationalist, Enlightenment

Genres: Elegies, plays, and essays

Joseph Addison, who became the model of English prose style in the 18th century, was in 1708 only a humble young poet praised by Dryden but largely unknown to the broader world, his opera Rosamund having recently been a failure on the London stage. But while in Ireland, Addison discovered his recent acquaintance Richard Steele had reprinted comments of his about Virgil without attribution in his periodical The Tatler.

Rather than throw a fit and sue Steele for plagiarism, Addison signed on as a contributor to Steele’s periodical, where he produced noteworthy essays on men and women, playhouses, the thermometer, and Plato’s Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul; the man had a (very) special knack for writing essays, it turned out.

But that all paled in comparison to the effect of Addison and Steele’s next venture, The Spectator, published daily from 1 March 1711 to 8 December 1712, in which fictional characters would tell stories and comment on the theater, literature, fashion, art and philosophy.

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In the guise of characters like Will Honeycomb, Sir Roger de Coverley, and the eponymous “Spectator,” Addison and Steele sought to “enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.” Read by thousands, they helped to create the public square in England, according to Jurgen Habermas.

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Editor Robert Bisset, who prefixed Lives of the authors of The Spectator to his 1799 edition of the work, argued that Addison and Steele sought to use The Spectator to improve English manners and morals, which they saw as having become degraded in the time of Charles II.

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In 1713, Addison produced the tragedy of Cato, which was an immediate success, partly due to political overtones both Whigs and Tories were able to read into it. The play held the stage throughout the 18th century, and was a favorite of George Washington, who had it acted at Valley Forge. Some of the language made famous during the American Revolution, such as Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death!” were paraphrases of lines in Addison’s play.

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Public Domain Texts

The Spectator, a New Edition with Illustrative Notes, to which are prefixed the Lives of the Authors.AEdited by Robert Bisset. (London: Printed for G. Robertson, 1793.) Volume One.

Cato: A Tragedy by Mr. Addison. (London: Printed for J. Thomson in the Strand, 1750.)