Coffeehouse sociability, science and public life in John Hill’s ‘the inspector’

Abstract

In the late 1740s and early 1750s, John Hill sought fame and recognition in two fields of public life, as both a man of science and a man of letters. In both intellectual pursuits, the coffeehouse was an important model of sociability and conversation. In addition to his formal prose satires on the Royal Society, he was also a highly successful essayist, writing over 720 essays as ‘The Inspector’ for the daily newspaper The London Daily Advertiser. This chapter offers a focused study of Hill’s essays on the coffeehouse in ‘The Inspector’, showing how Hill conceived of the coffeehouse as a public and open space where reputation could be made and destroyed. In this formulation, the coffeehouse also plays an important role in his satires on the Royal Society in the same period.