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Updated: June 3, 2025
Bickerstaff announced his assistants, and among others named as authority in Foreign Affairs a waiter at Saint James Coffeehouse known as "Kidney." The spirit of rollicking freedom in the publication, with a touch of philosophy, and a dash of culture, caught the public fancy at once. The "Tatler" was the theme in every coffeehouse, and in the drawing-rooms, as well.
After such prophets as they, the almanack makers hardly deserve to be mentioned; no, not even the renowned Partridge, whose wonderful prognostications set all England agog in 1708, and whose death, at a time when he was still alive and kicking, was so pleasantly and satisfactorily proved by Isaac Bickerstaff.
As Swift rarely signed his name to any literary work, letting it stand or fall on its own merits, his burlesque appeared over the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff, a name afterwards made famous by Steele in The Tatler.
Steele determined to employ the name which this controversy had made popular; and, in 1709, it was announced that Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was about to publish a paper called the Tatler. Addison had not been consulted about this scheme: but as soon as he heard of it, he determined to give his assistance.
A typical instance is shown in the way in which, under the assumed name of Isaac Bickerstaff, he dealt with an astrologer and maker of prophetic almanacs, whose name was Partridge.
Step into Griffin's shop, he'll tell ye Of Goldsmith, Bickerstaff, and Kelly ... And, take one Irish evidence for t'other, Ev'n Homer's self is but their foster brother." Johnson was a rough consoler to a man when wincing under an attack of this kind. "Never mind, sir," said he to Goldsmith, when he saw that he felt the sting.
Swift, not then a deserter to the Tories, was a friend of Steele's, who, when the first 'Tatler' appeared, had been amusing the town at the expense of John Partridge, astrologer and almanac-maker, with 'Predictions for the year 1708, professing to be written by Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. The first prediction was of the death of Partridge,
Wortley, I look with some regard on every one that is related to her. This and my long acquaintance with you may in some measure excuse what I am now doing. I am surprized at one of the 'Tatlers' you send me; is it possible to have any sort of esteem for a person one believes capable of having such trifling inclinations? Mr. Bickerstaff has very wrong notions of our sex.
We hear of him at a dinner given by his countryman, Isaac Bickerstaff, author of Love in a Village, Lionel and Clarissa, and other successful dramatic pieces. The dinner was to be followed by the reading by Bickerstaff of a new play.
It is my departed friend, John Partridge, who concludes the advertisement of his next year's almanack with the following note: "Whereas it has been industriously given out by Bickerstaff, Esquire, and others, to prevent the sale of this year's almanack, that John Partridge is dead: this may inform all his loving countrymen, that he is still living in health, and they are knaves that reported it otherwise.
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