Richard Steele

Biography

Sir Richard Steele (1672–1729) was an Anglo-Irish essayist, playwright, journalist, and politician who, together with Joseph Addison, created the English periodical essay and helped shape modern prose style and middle-class culture. Born in Dublin, Steele was educated at Charterhouse School (where he befriended Addison) and Oxford before joining the army. His early plays, including The Conscious Lovers (1722), were important in developing sentimental comedy. But Steele’s greatest achievement was in journalism: he founded The Tatler (1709–1711) and, with Addison, co-founded The Spectator (1711–1712), periodicals that established the essay as a literary form and created a model for cultural journalism that endured for centuries. The Spectator’s fictional narrator, Mr. Spectator, and his club of characters provided a framework for essays on manners, morals, literature, and the arts that educated and entertained the emerging English middle class. Steele’s prose is characterized by warmth, humor, and a moral earnestness that sought to reform public manners and promote virtue without priggishness. He served in Parliament and was knighted in 1715.