Haywood must have begun working on The Female Spectator well before the shop at Fame was closed down. The monthly essay-paper began its two-year run in late April 1744, an odd time, one might have thought, to launch a periodical professing to offer ‘gay and inoffensive’ entertainment. Not only was the parliamentary session about to end, meaning that the ‘Town’ would soon empty for the summer, but the country was in a state of alarm over fears of French aggression. The Habeas Corpus Act had been suspended for three months from late February and would be suspended twice more. The Female Spectator was a success from the start, however. Its proprietors clearly regarded the venture as a major undertaking and were willing to spend quite a bit on publicity. It was announced to be ‘this day published’ in the Daily Post on 24 April following much fanfare and without the least hint of political intent: the offering will have an improving tendency, with many ‘amended, and All agreeably amused’. It combined the tried-and-true features of the essay-paper in the Spectator tradition with the more au courant features of the miscellaneous monthly magazine then coming into fashion. With its address to ‘the ladies’, a sure sign of genteel intentions, and ingratiating aim of pleasing ‘all of a polite Taste’, and with its movement through and across a range of social and urban locations, The Female Spectator contrived to position itself as carrying forward the ‘polite’ cultural agenda of an aspiring generation of women – and men, as will be seen – within an expanding urban culture.

The Female Spectator is usually read in contrapuntal relation to the ‘lucubrations’ of Mr Spectator, her ‘learned Brother of ever precious Memory’, and praised for its vigorous challenge to the masculine authority of her celebrated predecessor.