This book embraces periodicals across the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century to argue that this mode of writing, packed with humor and verve, originates the figure of the mass market author as a literary character. The author posits that, at the same time, periodicals harbor inescapable doubts as to whether such a character is sustainable.

Preface
Chapter 1: Author and Eidolon
I.The periodical life cycle
II.The Eidolon
III.Anonymity?
IV.Genre and the public sphere
V.The performance of authorship; readers as spectators
Chapter 2: Early Periodical Cross-Dressing
I.Lucubrations and sexual identity
II.Release the Crackenthorpes: The embattled Female Tatler
III.War on two fronts: The Female Tatler and the British Apollo
Chapter 3: Performance, Masculinity, and Paper Wars
I.The Fielding-Hill Paper War
II.Acting manly in the Covent-Garden Journal
III.John Hill's failure to fight
IV."Female" warriors enter the fray
V.Eidolons on Stage
Chapter 4: Femininity and the Periodical
I.Confirmed bachelors and spinsters: Eidolons and the problem of marriage
II."Below the Dignity of the human Species:" Establishing authority in Montagu and Haywood
III.The Old Maid: Frances Brooke's "Freeborn Briton" versus the coffee-house Connoisseur
IV.Beyond the spinster: Parrots and other Triflers
Chapter 5: No Animal in Nature so Mortal as an Author, or, Death and the Eidolon
I.The genre from Hell? Printers' Devils and News from the Dead
II.Periodicals as monuments, and the hope of resurrection
III.Corpses, plagiarizers of the dead, and other textual revenants: Grub-Street and Defoe
Bibliography

Manushag N. Powell is assistant professor in the English Department at Purdue University. Her research interests are centered on the cultural history of literary forms and include early types of "genre" fiction writing, the periodical essay, and authors-as-characters.