Moving away from
newspapers, let’s now focus on
magazines. Now the
first magazine was a little periodical called the
Review and it was
started in London in 1704. It looked a lot like the
newspapers of the
time, but in terms of its contents it was much different. Newspapers
were concerned mainly with news events but the Review focused on
important domestic issues of the day, as well as the policies of the
government. Now, in England at the time, people could still be thrown
in jail for publishing articles that were critical of the king. And
that is what happened to Daniel Defoe. He was the outspoken founder of
the review. Defoe actually wrote the first issue of the Review from
prison. You see, he had been arrested because of his writings that
criticized the policies of the Church of England, which was headed by
the king. After his release, Defoe continued to produce the Review and
the magazine started to appear on a more frequent schedule, about three
times a week. It didn’t take long for other
magazines to start popping
up. In 1709, a magazine called the Tattler began publication. This new
magazine contained a mixture of news, poetry, political analysis and
philosophical essays.