The Woman behind the Man behind the World: Mary Wells and the Feminisation of the Late Eighteenth-Century Newspaper
The rediscovery of the Della Cruscans, a late-eighteenth century poetic coterie, has helped to revive an interest in papers of “elegance” such as John Bell’s the World, which established a successful template for the late eighteenth-century newspaper, one that was exploited by many of the papers that followed in its wake. In this chapter, Claire Knowles examines the contribution made to this paper not only by women in general, but by one woman in particular, Mary Wells. Wells was a popular actress and the mistress of the paper’s proprietor, Edward Topham. She was implicated in the paper’s establishment and played an important role in its daily running. By examining Wells’ largely unacknowledged role at the World alongside the work of the female poets that the paper encouraged, Knowles suggests that the paper can be seen as an important example of the increasing feminisation of print media in the late-eighteenth century.