Addison, Joseph


Joseph Addison
1 May 1672 - 17 June 1719

English author and critic, best known for his collaboration with Richard Steele (1672-1729) in producing the Tatler and Spectator, highly regarded early Augustan journals of news, culture, and moralistic essays. Addison's contribution to the Gothic tradition is indirect but nonetheless significant, a consequence of his essays on the sublime, the imagination, and the supernatural in literature. Of crucial importance to any full understanding of the development of the (proto)Gothic. For more, see the The Sublime here at LitGothic.

Sites:
Brief biographical note
[Wikipedia]
Biographical note
[Encarta Online]
Biographical note
[Theatre Database]
Biographical note
[Columbia Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia.com]
Brief biographical note
[Peter Landry, Biographies]
There was not a village in England that had not a ghost in it, the churchyards were all haunted, every large common had a circle of fairies belonging to it, and there was scarce a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit.
- Spectator 419
Biographical essay
Samuel Johnson's Life of Addison
Brief overview
[Acton Institute]
Joseph Addison page
A partial bibliography and a few links. [San Antonio College LitWeb]
Portraits  
[National Portrait Gallery, London]


Etexts:
Etexts are from Theodore Gracyk's online edition of Addison's "Pleasures of the Imagination" (Spectator 411-421) unless otherwise noted. [Minnesota State U - Moorhead]

Spectator 412.
A brief discussion of Addison's views on elements of the sublime. [George Landow,Victorian Web, Brown U]
Full text of Spectator 412
Discussion of the sublime and the beautiful.
Spectator 413
This essay continues the discussion begun in the essay linked just above.
Other Spectator essays discussing the imagination and its role in and relation to the sublime, the beautiful, and the picturesque, including 414, 415, 416, 417, and 418, are also of relevance.
Full text of Spectator 419 [July 1712]
This essay is Addison's discussion of "the fairy way of writing": Addison on the supernatural in literature, its sources, its proper uses, its exemplification in (who else?) Shakespeare. Check this one out.

"Joseph Addison."