The
original Tatler was founded in 1709 by Richard Steele, who used a nom de plume of "Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire", the first
such consistently adopted journalistic persona, which adopted in the first person, as it were, the seventeenth-century genre of "characters", as first established in English by Sir Thomas Overbury and soon to be expanded by Lord Shaftesbury''s Characteristics (1711). Steele''s idea was to publish the news and gossip heard in London coffeehouses, hence the title, and seemingly, from the opening paragraph, to leave the subject of politics to the newspapers,
while presenting Whiggish views and correcting middle-class manners,
while instructing "these Gentlemen, for the most part being Persons of
strong Zeal, and weak Intellects...what to think." To assure
complete coverage of local gossip, a reporter was placed in each of the
city''s popular coffeehouses, or at least such were the datelines:
accounts of manners and mores were datelined from White''s; literary notes from Will’s; notes of antiquarian interest were dated from the Grecian Coffee House; and news items from St. James’s.
In its first incarnation, it was
published three times a week. The original Tatler was published for only two years, from April 12, 1709 to January 2, 1711. A collected edition was published in 1710–11, with the title The Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq..
Three months after the original "Tatler" was first published, Mary Delariviere Manley,
using the pen name "Mrs. Crackenthorpe," published what was called the
"Female Tatler." However, its run was much shorter: the
magazine ran
for less than a year--from July 8, 1709 to March 31, 1710.
The current publication, named after Steele''s periodical, began publishing in 1901.
For some time, a weekly publication, it was filled with news and
pictures of high society balls, charity events, race meetings, shooting
parties, fashion and gossip. Cartoons by "The Tout" and H. M. Bateman were featured regularly. From the 1940s until the early 1960s, the then-weekly magazine was entitled Tatler & Bystander (after absorbing The Bystander). In March 1968, the "Bystander" was dropped from the magazine''s title, and it began to publish monthly. Tina Brown was the editor from 1979 until 1983.