Coffeehouse Curiosities: Materiality and Musealization Strategies in The Athenian Mercury

Abstract

Based on the epistolary interaction with readers, John Dunton's Athenian Mercury (1691–97) provided a platform for the discussion and dissemination of knowledge drawn from diverse fields. Plagued by doubts about its reliability, the periodical constantly had to (re‐)assert its credibility. One of the strategies the Mercury employed was to emphasize the physicality of objects via text, practising a performance of materiality. Taking the letter‐as‐object as its starting point, this article argues that materiality played a crucial role in not only the representation but also the active production of truthfulness. Examining how Dunton's periodical leveraged notions of the coffeehouse as an exhibition space, this article explores how the Mercury drew on musealization strategies to represent material objects to underline their existence and its own credibility. Interpellating readers as virtuosi, the Athenian Society staged the coffeehouse and even itself as a walk‐in curiosity cabinet, turning letters into matter and fiction into fact.