Steele Sir R
NAME: Steele, Richard (Sir)
ACHIEVEMENTS: Essays and publishing
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: March, 1672, Dublin, Ireland
DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: September 1, 1729, Carmarthen, Wales. Aged 57
DISCIPLINE: Writer/Politician
FIELD: Journalism/Theater/Politics
LANGUAGE: English
PARENTS: Richard Steele; Elinor Symes
SIBLINGS: Unknown
SPOUSE: 1) Margaret Stretch; 2) Mary Scurlock
CHILDREN: By Mary Scurlock: Richard, Eugene, Elizabeth, Mary
EDUCATION: The Charterhouse Foundation, London; Oxford University
MAJOR WORK: Play: "The Funeral"; Essays: in "The Tatler" and "The Spectator"
LIFE AND TIMES:
At 12, Steele was sent to the Charterhouse Foundation School in London. where he and future writer <a pal of> Joseph Addison* began a lifelong friendship. At 22, Steele became a gentleman-volunteer in a troop of lifeguards and by 1700, he was enjoying the life of an officer-about-town in London with other literary-minded young men, including <a pal of> William Congreve* and <a pal of> Vanbrugh*.
In 1701, Steele wrote "The Funeral, or Grief-a-la-Mode" performed at the Drury Lane theater by actor <play performed by> Cibber*. Another comedy, "The Lying Lover", based on French playwright <based play on work of> Corneille*'s "Menteur", was performed in 1703, but was not successful.
In 1705, he wrote "The Tender Husband", based on the play "Sicilien" by French dramatist, <based play on work of> Moliere*. Addison made some additions to the text, wrote the prologue, and it did better.
In 1707, Steele was appointed editor of "The Gazette", the official periodical of the government. In 1709, under the pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaff, he founded "The Tatler", which consisted of a single page and was published three times a week. Steele explained that he chose the title to honor the "fair sex" and promised the periodical would include town gossip, political news, discussions of poetry and drama, and information on foreign affairs.
"The Tatler" soon became an arbiter of social taste. Steele wrote nearly all the articles himself. With his job as gazetteer, he had access to plenty of political information, and as a frequenter of clubs and coffee houses, he got all the gossip he needed. When Addison discovered who Isaac Bickerstaff was, he, too, started to contribute to "The Tatler", and his essays on morality played a large part in the journal's success. Steele concentrated on domestic matters. His style was informal, warm and humorous. Although he and Addison did not invent the short essay, they developed it and were the first to use it in a periodical.
In 1710, after it was discovered that he was the man behind "The Tatler"'s jibes at the government, Steele lost his job as gazetteer. But probably because of the intervention of <a pal of> Swift*, whose Tory friends were then in power, he kept his post as commissioner of stamps. "The Tatler" folded in January , 1711, but Steele was back in the publishing business two months later.
He and Addison launched "The Spectator", claiming in the first number that the periodical was not politically partisan. "The Spectator" was pretty much like "The Tatler", except with a sharper moral and political tone. In the second issue, they launched the famous Spectator "club" of imaginary characters who embodied stereotypes in the nation's life. The most famous character was Sir Roger de Coverley, the country squire. "The Spectator" was an outstanding success, and by the end of its publication (it lasted only a year) was selling over 10,000 copies a week.
Steele followed up "The Spectator" with "The Guardian", the last periodical in which Addison was involved. Steele continued to launch one periodical after another, but as with the rest, they had a brief life. "The Englishman", which followed the "Guardian", concerned itself with attacking the policy of the Tory ministry.
In one issue of "The Englishman", Steele printed an account of the ordeals of <printed story about> Selkirk*, an Englishman who had been left on a remote uninhabited island in 1703 and rescued by a Captain Rogers, six years later. Steele knew Rogers, interviewed Selkirk, and the resulting article inspired <inspired> Defoe*'s "Robinson Crusoe."
Steele was elected Member of Parliament in 1713 but didn't last long due to a war of words with writer Jonathan Swift. When Steele questioned the Hanoverian succession to the English throne in a pamphlet called "The Crisis", Swift countered in a pamphlet of his own, and by the time Steele took his seat in 1714, Swift had made such a hullabaloo that Steele was accused of seditious libel and, though defended by Addison in Parliament, was expelled. In 1715, however, Steele was re-elected, made a justice of the peace, and knighted.
After the suppression of the Jacobite rebellion in 1715, Steele was made a commissioner for forfeited estates in Scotland, and spent two years there. He was granted a patent for a plan to bring live salmon from Ireland -- the "Fish Pool Project" -- but this eventually failed. In 1719, he quarrelled with Addison over a proposal in Parliament to limit the creation of new peers. Addison died that year, unreconciled with his old friend.
ASSESSMENT: With Addison, developed the brief essay as a literary and journalistic genre.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: He collaborated with <collaborated with> Pope*
He was friends with <a pal of> Gay*
He encouraged the work of <encouraged> Lady Mary Wortley Montagu*
He was a friend of <a pal of> Law*
He was a friend of Eliza <a pal of> Haywood*
ONELINER: Richard Steele, 18th-century wit and essayist
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Aitken, George A, The Life of Richard Steele, William Isbister Ltd., London, 1889