Issuing Her Own: The Female Tatler

Key

 

Coffee houses served chocolate, wine, brandy, punch, and coffee in a corner of the main room. The first English coffee house opened in Oxford in the 1650s.

drugget refers mixed wool and silk or wool and linen, used for clothing.

education of women: Upper-class girls were traditionally educated in the home by tutors and later perhaps sent off to a finishing school. On the other hand, upper-class boys were sent off to boarding school at a very young age, paving the way for their eventual matriculation at the university.

Francis serves as a recurring character in the Female Tatler as Mrs. Crackenthorpe's servant.

Hackney refers to a four-wheeled coach, drawn by two horses, and seated for six persons, kept for hire.

hacks were writers who worked primarily for money and were associated with Grub Street, the "home of the impoverished writer." John Brewer writes, "Gentlemen poets and literati went to almost any lengths to avoid what they regarded as the vulgar taint of writing for money." 63

home jumps were, as Fidelis Morgan points out "ladies' underbodices." 64

mantua-makers fashioned ladies' dresses; a "mantua" is a loose gown for a woman.

Pater Noster Row and Warwick Lane are streets in London where a number of trade publishers were concentrated during the eighteenth century. John Brewer reports of the publishers in these areas: "Business thrived but was confined to a community in which nearly everyone was personally acquainted and in which a short walk was all that was necessary to complete a deal." 65 The close geographic proximity of the printing houses of B. Bragge and A. Baldwin, as well as the familar community formed among publishers, suggests that the writers of the fake and genuine version of the Female Tatler were likely acquainted with one another.

pens: Several critics note the rise of female authorship during the twentieth-century, concomitant with the rise of an increasingly commercial society that allowed writers to rely directly on the fruits of their labor rather than on the traditionally upper-class male-dominated world of patronage.

picaro refers to a rogue or knave. During the eighteenth century, the picaro was a notable presence on the litererary scene, as picaresque novels like Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders detailed the adventures of "the ambitious, resourceful picaro." Picaros used disguise to deftly exploit the rich and foolish by swindling them, often in new public spaces.66

semptstress is another word for seamstress, a woman who sews

sharpsters are swindlers or professional gamblers

three penny club: As Fidelis Morgan points out in her notes to the recently published edition of the Female Tatler, "at table, each diner would pay 3d." 67

 

 

  Main Page Eighteenth-Century England Home Bibliography Source Notes Credits