Literary Tradition
Observational letters, like Irving's Oldstyle letters, are a tradition that date in America as far back as the 1720s, when Benjamin Franklin wrote similar letters to the New-England Courant under the name of Silence Dogood. Franklin had borrowed the form from Joseph Addison, who Franklin admired, and who was known for the gentlemanly "Mr. Spectator" essays he wrote in the Guardian, Tatler and The Spectator in London in the early 18th century. Such essays had been a staple of colonial newspapers, and usually featured an observer –- normally a bachelor, with a personality that differed from that of the writer –- who commented, either directly or indirectly, on public truths.
Read more about this topic: Letters Of Jonathan Oldstyle
Famous quotes containing the words literary and/or tradition:
“The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.”
—Clive James (b. 1939)
“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes—our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)