Sir Richard Steele
Sir Richard Steele, (1672-1729). Anglo-Irish essayist and dramatist. He left Oxford University in 1692 to join the army and was a captain by 1700. His reforming spirit was first shown in his treatise The Christian Hero (1701), which was subtitled “An Argument proving that no Principles but those of Religion are Sufficient Steinbeck, John to make a great Man”. In 1709 he and his school friend Joseph Addison founded the periodical The Tatler. Steele wrote several hundred essays for The Tatler and the other magazines he edited, including The Spectator. He also wrote a number of plays, including The Funeral (1701). Elected to Parliament in 1713, he was expelled a year later for supporting the Hanoverian succession. He was re-elected and knighted in 1715.
