Tatler is a contemporary British "society" magazine published by Condé Nast Publications. It carries articles on a broad number of topics, but its primary focus is on social trends amongst the very wealthy and aristocratic. Tatler is currently edited by Geordie Greig, who was previously the literary editor of the Sunday Times. Tatler is named after Richard Steele's paper of the same name in the early 18th century.

The original Tatler was founded in 1709 by Richard Steele, who used a nom de plume of "Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire", the first such consistently adopted journalistic persona, which adopted in the first person, as it were, the seventeenth-century genre of "characters", as first established in English by Sir Thomas Overbury and soon to be expanded by Lord Shaftesbury's Characteristics (1711). Steele's idea was to publish the news and gossip heard in London coffeehouses, hence the title, and seemingly, from the opening paragraph, to leave the subject of politics to the newspapers, while presenting Whiggish views and correcting middle-class manners, while instructing "these Gentlemen, for the most part being Persons of strong Zeal, and weak Intellects...what to think." To assure complete coverage of local gossip, a reporter was placed in each of the city's popular coffeehouses, or at least such were the datelines: accounts of manners and mores were datelined from White's; literary notes from Will’s; notes of antiquarian interest were dated from the Grecian Coffee House; and news items from St. James’s.

In its first incarnation, it was published three times a week. The original Tatler was published for only two years, from April 12, 1709 to January 2, 1711. A collected edition was published in 1710–11, with the title The Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq..

Three months after the original "Tatler" was first published, a Mrs Crackenthorpe published what was called the "Female Tatler." However, its run was much shorter: the magazine ran for less than a year - from July 8, 1709 to March 31, 1710.



The current publication, named after Steele's periodical, began publishing in 1901. For some time, a weekly publication, it was filled with news and pictures of high society balls, charity events, race meetings, shooting parties, fashion and gossip. Cartoons by "The Tout" and H. M. Bateman were featured regularly. From the 1940s until the early 1960s, the then-weekly magazine was entitled Tatler & Bystander. In March 1968, the "Bystander" was dropped from the magazine's title, and it began to publish monthly.