Although The Spectator (literally) defined ‘The Establishment’, it has never been its organ. In fact, it was founded as a vehicle for root-and-branch reform that sought from the outset to upend the establishment. Its first editor, the Scottish firebrand Robert Stephen Rintoul, argued that, in spite of the magazine’s pointedly chosen title, ‘It is difficult to be a mere spectator in times like these.’ Its pages complained bitterly about an out-of-touch establishment: that too many ‘of the bons mots vented in the House of Commons appear stale and flat by the time they have travelled as far as Wellington Street’. The remedy it sought was the Great Reform Act, whose passage in 1832 it helped secure.
For the first 100 years of its existence, The Spectator was resolutely anonymous. It spoke with an inscrutable editorial ‘we’, transcending any one individual.
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