{{Short description|Defunct women periodical}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} {{Infobox magazine | title = The Female Spectator | image_file = Houghton EC7.H3362.746f - Female Spectator.jpg | image_size = <!-- default is 180px --> | image_alt = Houghton - Female Spectator | image_caption = Frontispiece to ''The Female Spectator'' (London, 1746) | editor = Eliza Haywood | category = Women's periodical | frequency = monthly | format = book | publisher = T. Gardner, at Cowley's Head opposite St. Clement's Church in the Strand | firstdate = {{Start date and age|1744|4|24}} | finaldate = {{End date|1746|5|31}} | finalnumber = 24 }}
{{italic title}} '''''The Female Spectator''''', published by Eliza Haywood between 1744 and 1746, is generally considered to be the first periodical in English written by women for women.<ref name="Wright">{{cite book | last1 = Wright | first1 = Lynn Marie | last2 = Newman | first2 = Donald J. | title = Fair Philosopher: Eliza Haywood and The Female Spectator | publisher = Bucknell University Press | date = 2006 | location = Lewisburg PA | isbn = 9780838758908 }}</ref>
==Publication== ''The Female Spectator'' was launched anonymously in April 1744 and was published on a monthly basis.<ref>{{cite book|author=Martin Conboy|editor=Richard Keeble|title=Print journalism. A critical introduction|date=2005 |publisher=Routledge|location=London; New York|page=13 |url=https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203006764|doi=10.4324/9780203006764|chapter=The print industry – yesterday, today, tomorrow|isbn=9780203006764}}</ref> It eventually ran for 24 numbers,<ref name="Wright"/> a longer run than most periodicals of the time.<ref name="Koon">{{cite journal|last=Koon|first=Helene |title=Eliza Haywood and the "Female Spectator"|journal=Huntington Library Quarterly|volume=42|issue=1|pages=43–55|date=Winter 1978|doi=10.2307/3817409|jstor=3817409}}</ref> Eliza Haywood has long been identified as the author, though she never acknowledged her involvement. Thomas Gardner was the publisher and printer.<ref>Penn, Sara. "'[https://womensprinthistoryproject.com/blog/post/63 ''The Female Spectator'': The First Periodical By and For Women]." ''The Women's Print History Project'', 25 February 2021.</ref>
==Audience and reception== The primary audience for Haywood's journal was women – the newly affluent middle classes, and the upper strata with leisure time and money. She wrote that she wanted the periodical to be "as universally read as possible", and a poem by an anonymous male author in ''The Gentleman's Magazine'' in December 1744 praising ''The Female Spectator'' suggests that it was indeed read by at least some men.<ref name="Wright"/>
==Contents== ''The Female Spectator'' is loosely modelled on ''The Spectator'' by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele.<ref name="Wright"/> The new publication differs from its inspiration principally in that it speaks exclusively from a female viewpoint. To do this it employs four characters: the eponymous "Female Spectator," who shares the benefits of her lifetime experience, and her three assistants, each of whom represents an idealized woman at a different stage of life: Euphrosine, the beautiful unmarried daughter of a wealthy merchant; the happily married and sophisticated Mira; and a "Widow of Quality."<ref name="Koon"/>
Each issue of the journal was originally published in book format and usually covers a single topic or narrative in the form of essays or stories<ref name="Wright"/> which frequently revolve around "love and marriage",<ref name="Girten">{{cite journal | last = Girten | first = Kristin M. | title = Unsexed Souls: Natural Philosophy as Transformation in Eliza Haywood's Female Spectator | journal = Eighteenth-Century Studies | volume = 43 | issue = 1 | pages = 55–74 | date = 2009 | doi = 10.1353/ecs.0.0086 | s2cid = 144233932 }}</ref> with an emphasis on moral attitudes. The essays use a straightforward structure of premise, development, and conclusion, with few digressions. The sentences are leisurely and well-balanced, with simple but forceful language.<ref name="Koon"/>
The explicit moral instruction is bolstered with exemplary or cautionary anecdotes<ref name="Wright"/> that demonstrate an "appropriate" point of view of different situations and warn of the consequences of risky behaviours.<ref name="Koon"/> One such anecdote features a young woman who disguises herself as a boy in order to follow her lover into the army; another tells of a young woman, raised in ignorance, who elopes with the first man to court her; and a third describes a woman, dissatisfied with marriage, whose love affair yields an illegitimate child.<ref name="Koon"/> Over the run of the journal such stories numbered sixty, some detailed enough to be likened to "miniature novels".<ref name="Wright"/>
Haywood defended the omission of current affairs by pointing out these were adequately represented in the newspapers of the day. She also argued the need for women to be more widely educated.<ref name="Koon"/> She devoted one series of issues, for example, to the study of Baconian empiricism and the natural world<ref name="Girten"/> and by so doing is said to have fostered women's interest in the microscope.<ref name="Merritt">{{cite book | last1 = Merritt | first1 = Juliette | title = Beyond Spectacle: Eliza Haywood's Female Spectators | publisher = University of Toronto Press | date = 2004 | isbn = 9780802035400 }}</ref>
==See also== * List of 18th-century British periodicals * List of 18th-century British periodicals for women
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External sites== * [https://archive.org/details/femalespectator01haywgoog ''The Female Spectator''] archives at the Internet Archive * {{worldcat|oclc=642234456|name=The Female Spectator}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Female Spectator, The}} Category:1744 establishments in England Category:1746 disestablishments in England Category:Defunct magazines published in the United Kingdom Category:Magazines published in England Category:Magazines established in 1744 Category:Magazines disestablished in 1746 Category:Magazines published in London Category:News magazines published in the United Kingdom Category:Defunct women's magazines published in the United Kingdom Category:Monthly magazines published in the United Kingdom Category:Women's magazines