Richard Steele

Richard Steele (1672-1729), English essayist, playwright, and statesman, who founded and contributed frequently to the influential 18th-century journal the Spectator.

Steele was born in March 1672 in Dublin and educated at the University of Oxford. He entered the army in 1694 and during his term of military service wrote three witty comic dramas, The Funeral (1701), The Lying Lover (1703), and The Tender Husband (1705). In 1707 Steele was appointed by the English statesman Robert Harley, 1st earl of Oxford, to edit the London Gazette, an official government publication.

On April 12, 1709, Steele brought out, under the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff, the first issue of the Tatler, a triweekly journal featuring essays and brief sketches on politics and society. In addition to his own essays, Steele published in the Tatler a number of papers by the English essayist Joseph Addison, whom he had met during his school days and who became an important colleague and friend. This publication was succeeded on March 1, 1711, by the more famous Spectator with both Steele and Addison as contributors. Many of the ideas for articles were Steele's, with Addison filling in the details and polishing the prose. Perhaps the best-known portion of the Spectator comprises a series of essays known as the Sir Roger de Coverley papers, which, in the person of a kindly and eccentric old country gentleman, present an idealized portrait of the 18th-century English squire. This character was conceived by Steele and named for an old English dance. When the last issue of the Spectator appeared on December 6, 1712, Steele had contributed 236 papers and Addison 274. Steele's next journalistic venture, the Guardian, started in 1713, lasted for 176 issues, and was succeeded by several periodicals, notably the Englishman (1713).

In these later undertakings, Steele, an ardent Whig, involved himself in violent controversy with the Tories, who then controlled the government. He entered Parliament as a Whig but was expelled in 1714 on the charge of having committed seditious libel in his pamphlet The Crisis, in which he advocated the succession to the British throne of the pro-Whig elector of Hannover, later King George I. Political disagreements tore apart the friendship of Addison and Steele in 1718. After the death of Queen Anne and the accession of George I later that year, Steele was reelected to Parliament, knighted, and made a justice of the peace, surveyor of the royal stables, and supervisor of the Theatre Royal of Drury Lane. There his last comedy, The Conscious Lovers, was produced in 1722. Steele's taste for good living kept him in continuous financial difficulty. In 1724, because of heavy debts, he retired to Wales. He died there on September 1, 1729.