The Detail is in The Devil

Beginning in October 1786, Charles Dibdin published a weekly newspaper called The Devil. The conceit is that the Editor is on the point of suicide when the Devil intervenes to dissuade him, providing Dibdin (writing as both the Editor and the Devil) with a pretext to deliver biting satire and vitriolic diatribes against the manners of the age and the degeneration of the theatres and newspapers. This chapter provides an assessment of Dibdin’s career as a journalist, arguing that Dibdin consistently took up an antagonistic stance towards both the theatre and the newspapers, motivated by a belief that the capitulation of both industries to commercial forces amounted to a betrayal of their joint responsibilities to the public sphere. In so doing it provides a much-needed reflection on the intermedial and symbiotic relationship between the theatre and newspaper publishing in the 1780s.