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How eighteenth-century fashion publications assumed a leading role in defining women's legitimate sphere of activities. In Market à la Mode, Erin Mackie examines the role that The Tatler and The Spectator, two eighteenth-century British lifestyle magazines, played in the growth of fashion and how they influenced their readers. She traces the commercial context in which they operated, focusing on the processes of commodification, fetishization, and revisions of gender identity. Mackie's study makes clear that fashion publications, far from being commentaries on passing trends, assumed a leading role in defining women's legitimate sphere of activities as well as in the development of commerce as recreation.

Tatler is the iconic literary and society journal founded in 1709. It was issued three times a week for two years and aimed to inform its readers about the latest trends and events in social life. To make sure the editors are aware of all the news in society, they sent their secret reporters to the four most famous coffee houses of the time. Those were White's, Will's, Grecian Coffee House, St. James's Coffee House. The stories were written and edited by Richard Steel, who worked under the pseudonym, Isaac Bickerstaff. Yet later, this name was coverage for other contributors like the famous writer Jonathan Swift and Joseph Addison. After two years of life, Tatler left a deep trace in Britain's cultural and literary life. Numerous subsequent incarnations like Tatler in Edinburgh, Female Tatler, the Northern Tatler, and London Tatler continued for decades. Even nowadays, there is an eponymous British magazine of the same thematical direction. After the closure, all Tatler editions were issued as several volumes of collected works, presented here.