This article revisits the under-appreciated connection between John Dunton and Daniel Defoe in the context of their epistolary periodicals, the Athenian Mercury and the Review. While the wide-scale use of reader letters in early periodicals has been acknowledged if not fully appreciated in contemporary scholarship, each author devoted copious space to both printing and commenting on submitted correspondence. Through attention to the relationship between manuscript and print letters, they highlighted the periodical as a vehicle for community information, opinion, and expertise. This pervasive self-reflexivity would remain a defining feature of the periodical genre.