Introduction to Periodical Essays and Other Prose in the Neoclassical Period
The Neoclassical period (roughly 1660–1800) saw the emergence of the periodical essay as one of the most important literary forms in English. The periodical essay appeared regularly in newspapers and journals — weekly, twice-weekly, or daily — and addressed a wide audience on topics ranging from literature and theatre to morality, manners, social customs, and politics. It is the direct ancestor of modern journalism and the modern column.
The three essays prescribed for this unit represent three distinct types of Neoclassical and early Romantic prose:
- Steele's "A Coffee-house and Its Frequenters" — The classic periodical essay: social observation, gentle satire of manners, accessible and lively. From The Tatler (1709–1711). Represents Addison and Steele's project of moral and social education through entertaining prose.
- Lamb's "The Londoner" — A personal, autobiographical essay in the Romantic mode. From The Morning Post (1802). Represents the transition from Neoclassical periodical essay to Romantic personal essay — more intimate, more subjective, more eccentric than Steele's polished social observation.
- Goldsmith's "War" — A reflective, ironic essay from The Citizen of the World (1762). Represents the satirical essay in the Swiftian tradition — using irony to expose the absurdity and horror of war from a detached, quasi-foreign perspective.
A periodical essay is a short prose piece appearing regularly in a journal or newspaper, usually written by a named or pseudonymous author, addressing a general audience on a topic of current interest. Key features:
- Short (typically 500–2000 words) — designed to be read in a single sitting
- Accessible — written for educated but not specialist readers
- A single topic or occasion — each essay focuses on one idea, observation, or experience
- A distinctive persona — each essayist creates a recognisable narrative voice (Mr. Spectator; Lien Chi Altangi in Goldsmith; Lamb's "Elia")
- Moral and/or social purpose — the essay aims to improve, inform, or gently correct the reader
"A Coffee-house and Its Frequenters"
From The Tatler, No. 1 · 12 April 1709 (or related issues) · The First Periodical Essay
Richard Steele was an Anglo-Irish playwright, journalist, and politician who founded two of the most important periodicals in English literary history. Born in Dublin, educated at Charterhouse (where he met Addison), and at Merton College, Oxford (without completing his degree), he served as a soldier, wrote several plays, and became involved in politics as a Whig MP. His literary legacy rests primarily on the periodicals he founded.
- The Tatler (1709–1711): Founded and mainly written by Steele; Addison contributed significantly from 1710. Published three times a week. Named after the fictional narrator "Isaac Bickerstaff" (borrowed from Swift). Topics: society, manners, literature, the coffeehouse world, morality. 271 issues total.
- The Spectator (1711–1712; 1714): Founded by Steele but primarily written with Addison. Daily publication. More literary and philosophical than The Tatler. The most influential periodical in English. 555 issues.
- The Guardian (1713): Another joint venture. 175 issues.
The coffeehouse was the central institution of early 18th-century English public life. Coffeehouses were places where men of all classes gathered to drink coffee (and later tea and chocolate), read newspapers, exchange news and gossip, discuss politics and literature, and conduct business. They were semi-public spaces — anyone with a penny for a cup of coffee could enter. Each coffeehouse had a particular character:
- Lloyd's Coffee House — used by merchants and insurers; became Lloyd's of London (the insurance market)
- Will's Coffee House — the literary coffeehouse; Dryden held court there; Pope, Gay, and Addison frequented it
- White's Chocolate House — aristocratic; became White's Club (the oldest gentlemen's club in London)
- Button's Coffee House — Addison's headquarters; later associated with The Guardian
- St. James's Coffee House — political; associated with Steele's Tatler
The Tatler was organised around different coffeehouses — each house provided material for a different section of the paper. This is the background to Steele's essay on the coffeehouse.
The Three Essays — Irani Café, a City-Lover's Letter, and an Anti-War Editorial
All three essays find perfect Indian parallels:
Steele's "Coffee-house" → The Irani Café or Chai Tapri: Any Pune student who has sat at a chai tapri outside their college knows Steele's coffeehouse world. The tapri draws every type: the political student who debates elections loudly, the poet who sits quietly in the corner, the professor who meets colleagues, the gossip who knows everyone's business. Steele's essay would translate perfectly into an observation of this democratic space where all social types meet on equal terms over a cup of tea.
Lamb's "The Londoner" → A Mumbai Lover's Letter: Lamb's passionate defence of London over nature is the feeling of every person who grew up in Mumbai and cannot understand why anyone would prefer a quiet village. "Mujhe mountains nahi chahiye — mujhe Dadar station chahiye." The noise, the crowd, the chaos — this IS home. Lamb would have understood Mumbai completely.
Goldsmith's "War" → A Newspaper Editorial on Conflict: Goldsmith uses a Chinese outsider's eyes to expose the absurdity of war. This is the technique of any good Indian editorial writer who uses an ironic distance — perhaps the perspective of an ordinary farmer or a schoolchild — to make powerful readers see the human cost of conflict that they have become numb to. The outsider's honest question — "Why do civilised people do this?" — is timeless and universal.
Overview and Content
Steele's essay on the coffeehouse — whether from The Tatler No. 1 or from related issues — presents the coffeehouse as a microcosm of London society. The narrator (Isaac Bickerstaff/Mr. Spectator) observes the various types of people who frequent the coffeehouse: politicians, wits, merchants, soldiers, scholars, gossips, social climbers. Each type is sketched with quick, witty characterisation.
Steele's coffeehouse essay typically works through a series of character sketches — each patron of the coffeehouse represents a social type:
- The Politician: Reads only the newspapers; has strong opinions about all public affairs; knows nothing from direct experience; his "information" is entirely second-hand gossip from the papers. He represents the new public opinion formed by print media.
- The Wit: Clever, quick, determined to be amusing at all costs. His wit is often at others' expense. He occupies a prominent position — the coffeehouse as stage for his performances.
- The Merchant: Practical, focused on business, impatient with abstract discussion. He represents the commercial class whose values are reshaping England.
- The Scholar: Speaks only in Latin and Greek tags; more at home in books than in the living world; comically out of place in the coffeehouse's chattering democracy.
- The Gossip: Has news of everyone's private affairs; spreads information (and misinformation) freely; the social medium through which the coffeehouse's life flows.
Steele's essay uses the coffeehouse as a convenient frame for a panoramic social observation. The coffeehouse brings together people from different classes and backgrounds — and the essay can therefore describe a cross-section of early 18th-century London society in a single, unified setting. This is exactly the social function of the periodical essay: to observe, describe, and gently correct the manners of a diverse readership.
The key insight: by sitting in a coffeehouse, Steele's observer can:
- Observe how different social types behave in a shared public space
- Note the contrast between how people present themselves and how they actually are
- Comment on the vanities, pretensions, and absurdities that each type displays
- Model for the reader the behaviour of the ideal "spectator" — observant, witty, morally engaged but not preachy
Steele's method — like Addison's — is to instruct through entertainment. He does not preach directly; he shows. By sketching the Politician, the Wit, and the Merchant, he implicitly invites readers to recognise these types — and themselves — and to consider what the ideal behaviour might be. The essay models civic virtue: the ideal coffeehouse frequenter is attentive, well-informed, balanced, witty without being malicious, engaged but not obsessive.
- Clear and accessible: Written for a broad audience — no classical pedantry, no technical vocabulary. The ideal periodical essay prose: anyone who can read can understand it.
- Light irony: Gentle, warm irony rather than savage satire. Steele observes human folly with amusement, not contempt.
- The quick character sketch: Steele is a master of the short, vivid character sketch — a few sentences that sum up a type completely. This technique comes from the classical tradition of the "character" (Theophrastus's Characters) and from Restoration comedy.
- Conversational and easy: The prose has the quality of intelligent conversation — it flows naturally, does not strain for effect, and leaves the reader feeling they have been in good company.
- Discuss Steele's "A Coffee-house and Its Frequenters" as a periodical essay. How does Steele use the coffeehouse as a social panorama? What social types does he observe and what does each represent?
- Write a critical note on Steele's prose style in "A Coffee-house and Its Frequenters." What are the key features of his essay technique?
- What was the 18th-century English coffeehouse? Why was it socially and culturally important?
- What is the periodical essay? How does it differ from other types of prose writing?
- Write a brief note on The Tatler and Steele's role in developing the periodical essay.
⚡ Quick Revision — Steele's Coffee-house Essay
- Richard Steele (1672–1729) — founded The Tatler (1709) and The Spectator (1711) with Addison
- The coffeehouse: penny admission; all classes; newspapers; gossip; business; the centre of 18th-century public life
- Essay uses coffeehouse as social panorama — character sketches of Politician, Wit, Merchant, Scholar, Gossip
- Purpose: instruction through entertainment; observe → model ideal civic behaviour; gentle irony, not preaching
- Style: clear, accessible, conversational, light irony, quick character sketches
"The Londoner"
Published in The Morning Post · February 1, 1802 · The Personal Essay as Self-Portrait
Charles Lamb is one of the most beloved of all English essayists — and one of the most unusual. He was born in London, educated at Christ's Hospital (where he was a contemporary of Coleridge), and worked as a clerk at the East India Company for 33 years. His life was marked by personal tragedy: his sister Mary, in a fit of madness, killed their mother (1796). Lamb devoted much of his life to caring for Mary, committing himself to living with her even knowing her madness might recur. Despite — or because of — this painful life, Lamb developed one of the most charming, warm, and eccentric prose styles in English.
Lamb's most famous work is his collection Essays of Elia (1823) and Last Essays of Elia (1833) — personal essays published in The London Magazine under the pseudonym "Elia." These essays — about old china, roast pig, dream-children, school recollections, his dead friends — are the most personal, warm, and eccentric essays in the English tradition. "The Londoner" (1802) predates the Elia essays but belongs to the same spirit: intensely personal, deeply in love with London, and celebrating the urban life that the Romantic poets were simultaneously rejecting in favour of nature.
Lamb was writing at the same time as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley — poets who celebrated nature, the countryside, and the sublime landscapes of mountains and lakes. Wordsworth believed that nature was the source of moral and spiritual health; city life was corrupting and deadening. Lamb famously disagreed — in "The Londoner" and elsewhere, he argues the opposite: for him, London IS nature; its streets, its bookshops, its variety, its human noise and bustle are his equivalent of Wordsworth's lakes and mountains. This makes "The Londoner" a significant counter-statement to Romantic nature poetry.
Content and Argument
"The Londoner" is a first-person declaration of Lamb's passionate attachment to London — and his inability to find pleasure in the countryside or in what others call "nature." The essay is structured as a personal confession: Lamb admits that he cannot share the fashionable taste for rural scenery, country walks, or natural landscapes. His "nature" is the city.
- Opening — "I was born in a crowd": Lamb establishes his identity as a creature of the city from birth. The crowd is his natural element — solitude is alien and uncomfortable.
- The confession of his "aversion" to nature: Lamb admits, with comic self-deprecation, that he cannot respond to sunsets, mountains, rivers, and country landscapes as he is supposed to. He tries — and fails. He is honest about this failure in a way that is both funny and touching.
- What London means to him: He lists the things he loves about London — the Strand, Fleet Street, the bookshops, the theatres, the variety of human faces, the noise, the bustle. For Lamb, these urban pleasures are as intense and as genuine as Wordsworth's mountain experiences.
- The anti-pastoral declaration: Lamb explicitly rejects the pastoral tradition — the idea that country life is morally and spiritually superior to city life. For him, the city IS life; the country is merely scenery.
- The plea for tolerance: Lamb ends by asking readers not to judge him for his urban preferences — there should be room in the world for different kinds of sensibility. Not everyone needs mountains to be spiritually alive.
- The "I" as subject: Unlike Steele's social observer, Lamb is the subject of his own essay. Everything radiates from his personal experience, his personal reactions, his personal history. This is the Romantic personal essay at its most developed — the self as the lens through which the world is observed.
- Comic self-deprecation: Lamb presents his own limitations (his inability to respond to nature) with cheerful self-mockery — he knows he is going against the grain of fashionable taste, and he is amused by his own unconventionality.
- Whimsical, digressive style: Unlike the clean periodical essay structure of Steele, Lamb's essays wander — they follow the movement of memory and association. A reflection on London leads to a childhood memory leads to a literary digression leads back to London. This digressive quality is part of the essay's charm.
- Archaic and literary vocabulary: Lamb deliberately uses archaic words and phrases — borrowing from 17th-century writers (Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Sir Thomas Browne) whom he adored. This gives his prose a quality of learned eccentricity.
- Warmth and personality: The essay has the texture of a personal letter from a much-loved friend. The reader feels they are in Lamb's company — sharing his enthusiasms, his aversions, his jokes.
"The Londoner" is important for several reasons:
- It is one of the earliest and most eloquent defences of urban life as a source of genuine human experience
- It is a significant counter-statement to the dominant Romantic ideology of nature as the source of moral and spiritual health
- It establishes the personal essay as a form of self-portraiture — the essay as a way of knowing oneself
- It is beautifully written — a model of warm, witty, personal prose that influenced many later essayists
- At the MA level, the essay raises interesting questions about the relationship between environment and sensibility — is Lamb's urban sensibility deficient, or simply different?
- Discuss Charles Lamb's "The Londoner" as a personal essay. How does Lamb's style and approach differ from the classical periodical essay of Steele? What is his argument about urban vs. rural life?
- Discuss "The Londoner" as a counter-statement to Romantic nature poetry. How does Lamb use his love of London to challenge the Wordsworthian celebration of nature?
- Who is Charles Lamb? What are the "Elia" essays? How does "The Londoner" relate to them?
- What is Lamb's argument in "The Londoner"? Why does he prefer London to the countryside?
- Compare the essay styles of Steele and Lamb. How does the personal essay differ from the periodical essay?
⚡ Quick Revision — Lamb's "The Londoner"
- Charles Lamb (1775–1834) — clerk at East India Company; sister Mary's guardian; "Elia" essayist
- Published The Morning Post, February 1, 1802 — predates the Elia essays but same spirit
- Central argument: London IS Lamb's nature — streets, bookshops, human variety, noise = his mountains and lakes
- Counter to Romantic nature worship: Wordsworth celebrated mountains; Lamb celebrates the Strand and Fleet Street
- Style: personal, digressive, whimsical, archaic vocabulary, comic self-deprecation, warmth
- Significance: early defence of urban life; model of personal essay as self-portraiture; Romantic-era counter-voice
"War"
From The Citizen of the World · 1762 · Satirical Essay in the Swiftian Tradition
We have already encountered Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) in Unit II as the author of She Stoops to Conquer. As an essayist, he is best known for The Citizen of the World (1762) — a collection of 123 letters supposedly written by a Chinese philosopher named Lien Chi Altangi to his friends in China. This fictional device — the "Chinese Philosopher" observing English society — allows Goldsmith to satirise English customs, institutions, and values from an "outsider" perspective.
The Citizen of the World belongs to a tradition of "foreign observer" satire — using the device of an intelligent outsider who cannot understand why the English do things the way they do, to expose the absurdity of English customs:
- Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters, 1721) — Persian visitors to France
- Voltaire's Candide (1759) — a naive hero travelling through Europe
- Swift's Gulliver's Travels — the English traveller seeing his own culture through fresh eyes in Books II and IV
- Goldsmith's Lien Chi Altangi — a Chinese philosopher in London
The "outsider" frame is the satirist's most powerful tool: it allows the writer to say things that would be too provocative if said directly by an English voice, by putting them in the mouth of an innocent observer who simply doesn't understand the rationalisation.
Goldsmith's essay "War" uses the persona of Lien Chi Altangi (the Chinese Philosopher) to examine the institution of war from an outsider's perspective. The essay adopts a tone of baffled, ironic bewilderment: the Chinese philosopher cannot understand how civilised people justify the organised mass killing of other human beings — and the more he examines the rationalisations that Europeans use, the more absurd and hypocritical they appear.
- War contradicts natural human sympathy: Goldsmith begins from a vision of natural human society — people helping each other, living in community, responding to each other's needs. War is a deviation from this natural human warmth.
- The absurdity of the reasons given for war: Through Lien Chi's "bewilderment," Goldsmith exposes the inadequacy of the standard justifications for war — national honour, religious duty, commercial advantage. None of these, when examined rationally, can justify the actual killing of thousands of human beings.
- The language of war vs. its reality: Goldsmith contrasts the heroic, glorious language in which war is described ("victory," "honour," "glory," "national greatness") with the actual reality — dead bodies, devastated families, wasted resources, the suffering of ordinary people. The gap between the rhetoric of war and its actual human cost is the essay's central ironic target.
- The complicity of civilisation: The most disturbing argument: civilised, educated, Christian Europe is the most violent society on earth. The Chinese philosopher — from a country that Europeans consider "barbarous" — finds European warfare incomprehensible precisely because Europe considers itself civilised. The irony is that "civilisation" has produced more organised and efficient killing than "barbarism" ever could.
- The human cost — the victims' perspective: Goldsmith shifts attention from the commanders and statesmen to the ordinary soldiers and civilians who bear the actual cost of war. Their suffering is given dignity and weight that is absent from the heroic narratives that justify war.
Goldsmith's irony in "War" is different from Swift's savage irony (which says the exact opposite of what it means). Goldsmith's irony is more subtle — it works through the gap between the Chinese philosopher's naive, literal-minded questions and the reader's awareness of the "answers" those questions imply:
- When Lien Chi asks "why do Europeans kill thousands of people for territorial disputes that could be settled by negotiation?" — the ironic implication is that there is no rational answer
- When he observes that the religions which preach "peace on earth, goodwill to men" also bless armies going to war — the ironic gap speaks for itself
- The Chinese philosopher's "bewilderment" is the ironic device — he is not genuinely confused but is performing the confusion that a rational person would feel if they actually looked at war without the cultural conditioning that makes it seem normal
Goldsmith's "War" belongs to a great tradition of anti-war writing in English literature — alongside Swift's ironies, Voltaire's Candide, Dr. Johnson's political pamphlets, and later the war poetry of Owen and Sassoon. What makes it specifically Neoclassical is its method: the rational, ironic analysis that exposes the irrationality of war by applying to it the tools of reason. This is the Enlightenment critique of war: war is irrational; reason should replace it; the fact that it persists is a measure of how far humanity still is from its rational potential.
- The fictional persona: Lien Chi Altangi provides both protective distance (the satire is "from a Chinese") and ironic authority (an "outsider" who sees clearly what insiders have been conditioned not to see)
- Measured, clear prose: Unlike Swift's compressed fury, Goldsmith's style is measured and elegant — the style of a philosophical observer, not an angry satirist
- Emotional as well as rational appeal: The essay uses pathos as well as argument — the suffering of war victims is described with feeling, not just analysed intellectually
- The question as rhetorical device: Goldsmith uses rhetorical questions constantly — "Why do they...?", "How can a civilised people...?" These questions are not really asking for answers; they are demonstrating that the answers are indefensible
- Discuss Goldsmith's essay "War" as a satirical anti-war piece. How does he use the device of the Chinese Philosopher to expose the absurdity and hypocrisy of European attitudes to war?
- Write a critical note on the ironic method in Goldsmith's "War." How does the persona of Lien Chi Altangi function as a satirical device?
- What is The Citizen of the World? Who is Lien Chi Altangi?
- What are the main arguments of Goldsmith's essay "War"?
- How does Goldsmith's irony in "War" differ from Swift's irony in "A Modest Proposal"?
⚡ Quick Revision — Goldsmith's "War"
- From The Citizen of the World (1762) — letters of Chinese philosopher Lien Chi Altangi in London
- Outsider satire tradition: Montesquieu (Persian Letters), Voltaire (Candide), Swift (Gulliver) → Goldsmith
- Central argument: war contradicts natural human sympathy; its justifications are irrational; civilised Europe is most violent
- Gap between heroic language of war (glory, honour) and its actual human cost (dead soldiers, broken families)
- Ironic method: Chinese philosopher's "bewilderment" exposes absurdity of European rationalisations for killing
- Style: measured, elegant, philosophical; emotional as well as rational; rhetorical questions
| Feature | Steele — "Coffee-house" | Lamb — "The Londoner" | Goldsmith — "War" |
|---|---|---|---|
| Form | Periodical essay (social observation) | Personal essay (self-expression) | Satirical/philosophical essay (fictional persona) |
| Subject | The coffeehouse and its social types | His own love of London; rejection of rural nature | The irrationality and hypocrisy of war |
| Persona | Isaac Bickerstaff / Mr. Spectator — the social observer | "I" — Lamb himself; deeply personal and confessional | Lien Chi Altangi — fictional Chinese philosopher; outsider |
| Tone | Light, witty, gently ironic, instructive but entertaining | Warm, whimsical, comic self-deprecating, affectionate | Measured, ironic, philosophical, emotionally engaged |
| Purpose | Social education; model civic behaviour; moral instruction through entertainment | Self-expression; defence of urban life; challenge to Romantic nature ideology | Expose absurdity of war; anti-war argument; Enlightenment critique of irrational violence |
| Style | Clear, accessible, balanced, clean periodical prose | Digressive, archaic, personal, warm, eccentric | Elegant, philosophical, rhetorical questions, irony through the outsider lens |
| Literary Period | Early Augustan / Early 18th century (1709) | Early Romantic (1802) | Mid-Augustan / Neoclassical (1762) |
- Compare and contrast the three prescribed prose essays. How do Steele, Lamb, and Goldsmith differ in their approaches to the essay form, their styles, and their purposes?
- Discuss the development of the English essay from the periodical essay of Steele to the personal essay of Lamb. What changes, and what remains the same?
- All three essays deal with aspects of urban and social life. Discuss with reference to specific examples from each essay.