It was during the Augustan period that writing in journals emerged as a distinct form of writing and attracted the attention of most of the talented writers and also the attention of a large section of educated readers. Dr. Johnson started his literary career by writing for The Gentleman’s Magazine as one of its employees.
After he stopped working for this periodical, he started writing for the journal called, The Rambler. He wrote many of his essays in The Idler, which appeared every Sunday in The Universal Chronicle. Goldsmith started his literary career by writing for the journal called The Monthly Review.
A little later he wrote for the periodicals called The Bee and The Public Ledger and it is said that some of the best essays written by Goldsmith are the ones which appeared in these two journals.
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Fielding, the famous novelist of his age, wrote in the two journals called The True Patriot and The Jacobite Journal and later issued his own journal called The Covent Garden Journal. Steele published a large number of his essays in his journal called The Tatler, and Addison published a large number of his essays in his own journal called The Spectator. Defoe established his own periodical called The Review and started his literary career by writing articles in that periodical. The writings published in these journals were not all of the same type.
Some of them were in the form of political attacks or defences, some in the form of philosophical speculations, some in the form of narratives and some others in the form of personal experiences.
But they were all intended to be something which was short but yet sufficiently enlivening for those educated readers who expected something new every week or fortnight. In short, it was during this period that journalistic writing distinguished itself as an independent variety of English.