Complete and unabridged, with 59 full-page plates by Thomas Gibson, Thomas Gainsborough and Nathaniel Dance-Holland. Sir Roger de Coverley, the coffee-house, the club, the ladies' fan drill, and the essays that taught English prose how to be conversational. Addison and Steele put out The Spectator daily in 1711 — a page or two, a penny, no politics, addressed to a nation that had just discovered it liked reading over breakfast. Johnson told anyone who wanted a good style to give his days and nights to Addison. Fifty-nine plates, from Hogarth's Shrimp Girl to Gainsborough's Watering Place, carry the same coffee-house world of actors, wits, and ordinary faces into the book.
