Political Biography of Joseph Addison

One of the most durable eighteenth-century writers, Joseph Addison (1672-1719) is best remembered for his sparkling and rangy entries in the Tatler (1709-11) and the Spectator (1711-12), both co-edited with Richard Steele. Indeed, the locution 'Addison and Steele' retains a corporate familiarity unrivaled in the British literary tradition. To his contemporaries, however, Addison had a strong individual identity at odds with the genial personae of his periodical writing. His career as a partisan began inauspiciously, with A Letter from Italy (1704), drafted during a period of whig dominance, but membership of the whiggish Kit-Kat Club afforded fresh opportunities.By the early 1710s, when the tory ascendency prompted his turn to periodical writing, Addison was a political fixture. The celebrity ensured by his and Steele's joint enterprises, along with the success of his heroic drama Cato (1713), enabled him to flourish during a low ebb in his party's fortunes. Enduring a surprisingly bumpy ride during the early reign of George I, Addison's final political publication, the two-part Old Whig (1719), pitted its author against his old friend Steele in a squabble about a Bill designed to restrict new peerages. This half-hearted and nasty effort is an unfortunate end to an august career. This biography puts his literary career into a political context.Alexander Pettit Staff is the author of 'Political Biography of Joseph Addison', published 2014 under ISBN 9781851969166 and ISBN 1851969160.