Steele, Sir Richard

Steele, Sir Richard (1672–1729), was born in Dublin, in the same year as Addison, and was educated with him at the Charterhouse. He was subsequently at Merton College, Oxford, whence he entered the army as a cadet in the Life Guards. As a result of a poem on Queen Mary's funeral dedicated to Lord Cutts, colonel of the Coldstream Guards, he became his secretary and obtained the rank of captain. He published The Christian Hero in 1701, in which he first displayed his missionary and reforming spirit. In the same year he produced his first comedy, The Funeral. Neither this nor his two next comedies, The Lying Lover (1703) and The Tender Husband (1705), proved very successful.

In 1709 he started the Tatler, which he conducted with the help of Addison until January 1711, and, again with Addison, he carried on the Spectator during 1711–12. This was followed by the Guardian. In 1713 he was elected MP for Stockbridge. In 1714 he published The Crisis, a pamphlet in favour of the Hanoverian succession, which was answered by Swift, and led to Steele's expulsion from the House on 18 March 1714. The tide turned in his favour with the accession of George I. He was appointed supervisor of Drury Lane Theatre, and to other posts, and was knighted in 1715. His last comedy, The Conscious Lovers, was produced in 1722. His letters to his second wife, Mary Scurlock (‘dear Prue’), were printed in 1787. Less highly regarded as an essayist than Addison, his influence was nevertheless great; his attacks on Restoration drama; his approval of the ‘sober and polite Mirth’ of Terence; his praise of tender and affectionate domestic and family life; and his own reformed and sentimental dramas did much to create an image of polite behaviour for the new century.