the spectators, also known as moral weeklies, were an important magazine genre which came into being in the early 18th century and which shaped european identity by developing the strategies of critical journalism and by popularizing the ideas and values of the age of enlightenment. investigating modes of storytelling in the spectators is an important starting point for a paradigmatic investigation of our historical, cultural and philosophical evolution since the enlightenment and the impact of these magazines on issues of identity in today's europe. in this collection on, we present a series of contributions which study english, french, spanish, italian, german, dutch, czech, polish and danish-norwegian periodicals.