The Augustan Reprint Society
SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE
SELECTIONS FROM
THE
OBSERVATOR
(1681-1687)
Introduction by
Violet Jordain
PUBLICATION NUMBER 141
WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY
University of California, Los Angeles
1970
GENERAL EDITORS
William E. Conway, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles
Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
David S. Rodes, University of California, Los Angeles
ADVISORY EDITORS
Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan
James L. Clifford, Columbia University
Ralph Cohen, University of Virginia
Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles
Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago
Louis A. Landa, Princeton University
Earl Miner, University of California, Los Angeles
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota
Everett T. Moore, University of California, Los Angeles
Lawrence Clark Powell, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
James Sutherland, University College, London
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
Robert Vosper, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
Edna C. Davis, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
Roberta Medford, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
[Note: For full text go to Page 9][Pg i]
INTRODUCTION
I fancy, Trimmer, that if You and I could but
get leave to peep out of our Graves again a matter
of a hundred and fifty year hence, we should find
these Papers in Bodlies Library, among the Memorialls
of State; and Celebrated for the Only Warrantable
Remains concerning this Juncture of Affairs.
(Observator No. 259, 16 December 1682)
When the first of 931 single, folio sheets of the Observator appearedon 13 April 1681, the sixty-five-year-old Roger L'Estrange, their soleauthor, had been a controversial London Royalist for over twenty years.As Crown protégé, he had served intermittently as Surveyor of the Press,Chief Licenser, and Justice of the King's Peace Commission; as a writer,he had produced two newspapers, the Intelligencer and the Newes(1663-1666), dozens of political pamphlets, and seven translations fromSpanish, Latin, and French.[1] Rightl