Romantic photographs by Alice Hughes and Lallie Charles of willowy peeresses, dressed in lace gowns and embracing their ringleted offspring, appeared liberally throughout each issue. Sometimes, aristocratic children featured by themselves; a portrait of the five-year-old son of Lady Howard of Glossop, dressed as Cupid on The Tatler’s 11 September cover is particularly poignant, as that child, the Hon Philip Granville James Fitzalan Howard, Lieutenant, 3rd Battalion, Welsh Guards, died of wounds on 24 May 1918, aged 23.
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The Tatler devoted at least a third of every issue to reviews of the latest musicals and plays. The hits of 1901 included The Toreador at the Gaiety, starring Miss Maidie Hope (pictured)
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For the Edwardians, going out was the new staying in. Restaurants proliferated, theatres thrived, and The Tatler devoted at least a third of every issue to reviews of the latest musicals and plays. The hits of 1901 included San Toy at Daly’s, The Toreador at the Gaiety, and Sherlock Holmes at the Lyceum, based on the sensational stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Celebrated stage beauties – Gertie Millar, Gabrielle Ray, Marie Tempest, Marie Studholme – smiled from The Tatler’s pages, while curious readers could enjoy a series of exclusive flash-light photographs by Frederic Hodsoll of leading ladies in their elaborate backstage dressing rooms. Sometimes, the worlds of high society and the stage collided. The 5th Earl of Rosslyn, having squandered his fortune, had what could be politely described as a portfolio career. He appeared twice in The Tatler during its first months; both as the author of ‘How I Intend to Break the Bank’ (at Monte Carlo) and, a few weeks later, in his other role, as an actor, on tour with Mrs Langtry in A Royal Necklace. Rosslyn’s rackety life was the ideal subject for a magazine that strove to ‘report on society and the drama more brightly and more genially than any other magazine’.
Now, 125 years on, although the original inhabitants of Tatler’s world are long gone, the modest ambitions of its first editor, Clement Shorter, have a prophetic ring to them. ‘We wish our Tatler to take a permanent place in public esteem, living and dying week by week through the ages. Perhaps our wish will come true.’
Perhaps, Mr Shorter, it will.
This feature was first published in the July 2026 issue of Tatler.