Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison

By Khakimova Sevara

22.106

Joseph Addison (1 May 1672 – 17 May 1719) was an English essayist, poet, playwright, and politician. He was the eldest son of Lancelot Addison. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend Richard Steele, with whom he founded The Spectator magazine.

Contribute to literature

• He contributed to the Guardian and to the revived Spectator; his Spectator essays (1712) on Paradise Lost are an important landmark in literary criticism. On the return of the Whigs to power, Addison was again appointed chief secretary for Ireland and started the Free‐holder (1715–16).

Joseph Addison famous for

• Joseph Addison (1672-1719) was a renowned contemporary writer and politician in Great Britain. He is best known for his satirical social criticisms and contributions to The Tatler and The Spectator, which he founded with his friend Richard Steele

Joseph Addison's writing style

Addison is one of the greatest prose stylists in English literary history. He was the pioneer of a style that was very simple, lucid, natural, moderate, free from extravagant expression, and called 'middle style'. The most striking feature of Addison's style is clearness and lucidity of expression

Joseph Addison's philosophy

• Joseph Addison was an important theorist of sociability best known for his essays published in The Tatler (1709-1711) and The Spectator (1711-1712, 1714). His essays promoted and exemplified an ideal of polite sociability that became extremely influential in the eighteenth century and afterwards.

Famous essay of Joseph Addison

• As a writer, Addison produced one of the great tragedies of the 18th century in Cato, but his principal achievement was to bring to perfection the periodical essay in his journal, The Spectator.

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