About
The Idler is a bi-annual, book-shaped magazine that campaigns against the work ethic.
It was founded in 1993 by Tom Hodgkinson and his friend Gavin Pretor-Pinney.
The title comes from a series of essays by Dr Johnson, published in 1758-9 in the Gentleman’s Magazine.
The intention of the magazine is to return dignity to the art of loafing, to make idling into something to aspire towards rather than reject.
As well as providing a radical and thought-provoking read, the Idler is also very funny.
Editor Tom Hodgkinson has written two books which develop this attitude to life. The first, How To Be Idle, has been published in 20 countries and has so far become a best-seller in the UK, Italy and Germany.
His second book How To Be Free takes an anarchic approach to the everyday barriers that come between us and our dreams.
The current edition of the Idler is a joint project with those marvellously polite revolutionaries, the men from QI, John Lloyd and John Mitchinson. It has been typeset by Christian Brett of Bracketpress.
The Idler website currently has no forum as Tom finds that the forum medium itself encourages whingeing, procrastination and rudeness of an unacceptable order. However, a group of readers have set up their own forum called the Idle Foundation.
The site offers a bookshop and a clothing outlet, where you can buy Idler t-shirts and hoodies designed by Ged Wells.
"For Jerome, idleness had little in common with laziness. His notion of idleness in the world beyond his fiction was one of contemplative productivity with the minimum of fuss."