De Nederlandsche Spectator volumes 1-12 (Leiden van der Eyk, 1749)
12 identical engraved title-vignettes by Jan Wandelaar (1690-1759): Theseus and Ariadne walk through a landscape. Ariadne holds a thread from the globe yarn in Theseus' hands. The show is largely surrounded by a spell band on which the words Virtutis Amore and the reference to the eighth book of Ovidius' metamorphoses, in which the story is.
Complete set of this fortnightly Spectator, of which a total of 312 issues were published, each of eight pages. In the first issue, the unknown editor gives a profile of some of his friends who will assist him: they know their languages, each of them has a special expertise, some love poetry, and all, the editor included, are Protestant, "this is enough as far as they and I are concerned." The name of one of his collaborators has become well known: the Alkmaar rector and Neo-Latin poet E.W. Higt (1723 - 1762).
There is a table of contents in the front of each volume and volume XII contains an index to all volumes.
The title was used twice more towards the end of the eighteenth century: in 1786 for an Amsterdam weekly, but publisher J. Verlem (or editor H. Bergh) changed the name to 'De Nederlandsche spectator met de bril' already after 14 issues, and in 1792 for an Utrecht periodical, edited by H. van Otterloo, of which 50 issues appeared.
The Nederlandsche Spectotor was following the example of the english 'The Spectator', a periodical published since 1711 by Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele, both politicians, and one of the bestsellers of the 18th century. Its 500 issues sold up to 4000 copies a day, and carried news and comment, but especially comments on manners, morals and literature. The publication pretended to be the reports by a Mr Spectator on the conversations of a club comprising representatives of the country squirearchy, the town, commerce and the army.
Keywords: 18th Century (1701-1800); History; Periodical; Philosophy; Journalism; Literature; Netherlands