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Steele,
Sir Richard (1672-1729), English essayist, playwright, and statesman,
who founded and contributed frequently to the influential 18th-century
journal the Spectator.
Steele was born in Dublin. He entered the army in
1694 and during his term of military service wrote three comic dramas,
The Funeral (1701), The
Lying Lover (1703),
and The Tender
Husband
(1705). In 1707 Steele was appointed
to edit
the London Gazette, an official government publication.
In
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 a number of papers by the English essayist Joseph
Addison. This publication was succeeded in 1711, by the more famous
Spectator with both Steele and Addison as contributors. Steele's next
journalistic venture, the Guardian, started in 1713, lasted for 176
issues, and was succeeded by several periodicals.
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. After the
accession of King George I later that year, Steele was reelected to
Parliament, knighted, and made supervisor of the Theatre Royal of Drury
Lane. There his last comedy, The
Conscious Lovers,
was produced in 1722.
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