The Idler (1993)
The Idler #42: Smash the System
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| Editor | Tom Hodgkinson |
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| Categories | Arts/Culture |
| Frequency | Annual (previously quarterly and bi-annual) |
| Year founded | 1993 |
| Company | Idler |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Website | Official website |
| ISSN | 1351-5098 |
The Idler is a quarterly British magazine devoted to its ethos of 'idling'. Founded in 1993 by Tom Hodgkinson and Gavin Pretor-Pinney, the publication's intention is to return dignity to the art of loafing, to make idling into something to aspire towards rather than reject.
The magazine combines the aesthetics of 1990s slacker culture and pre-industrial revolution idealism. The title comes from a series of essays by Samuel Johnson, published in 1758–59.
On the practice of idling, Tom Hodgkinson writes:
[a] characteristic of the idler's work is that it looks suspiciously like play. This, again, makes the non-idler feel uncomfortable. Victims of the Protestant work ethic would like all work to be unpleasant. They feel that work is a curse, that we must suffer on this earth to earn our place in the next. The idler, on the other hand, sees no reason not to use his brain to organise a life for himself where his play is his work, and so attempt to create his own little paradise in the here and now.
The Idler was launched in 1993 when its editor, Tom Hodgkinson, was 25. The title came from a series of essays by Samuel Johnson. In it, Johnson wrote on such subjects as sleep and sloth and said: "Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler." The new Idler took this 18th-century sensibility and combined it with the radical philosophies of the 1990s. Issue One featured a profile of Dr Johnson and an interview with psychonaut Terence McKenna.
The Idler began as a quarterly magazine. It later become a biannual publication under Ebury Press and eventually a small press annual collection of essays from 2009.
2010 saw the opening of the Idler Academy of Philosophy, Husbandry and Merriment: a school, coffee house and bookshop. In 2016 the Academy closed (but continues to offer courses at various venues and online) and The Idler returned to its quarterly release schedule.
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