In the hit Netflix series Bridgerton, London society is set alight thanks to a newsletter penned by an anonymous writer whose sharp pen captures all the pomp, circumstance and gossip of the season. Fans of Bridgerton will recognise this writer, Lady Whistledown, as an integral part of the show. For viewers, she serves as our narrator. For characters, she is known as the pseudonymous author of the salacious gossip newsletter, Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers – making and breaking fortunes with each issue.
The invention of fictional “editors” to narrate similar publications was a tactic really used by 18th-century journalists and these editors could take any form, from a cantankerous Scotsman to a cosmopolitan green parrot.
