Steele, Richard

Steele, Richard 

Born Mar. 12,1672, in Dublin; died Sept. 1,1729, in Carmarthen. British writer and journalist.

Steele studied at’ Oxford University. In his comedies The Funeral (1701), The Lying Lover (1703), The Tender Husband (1705), and The Conscious Lovers (1722), he attacked the immorality of the English comedy of the Restoration period and often fell into sentimentality and grandiloquence. In collaboration with J. Addison, he published the satirical journals The Tatler (1709–11), The Spectator (1711–14), and The Guardian (1713), which helped pave the way for the English realistic novel of the 18th century and the bourgeois drama. In the essay genre, Steele depicted the daily life and mores of contemporary England.

WORKS

The Correspondence. Oxford, 1968.
The Plays. Oxford, 1971.

REFERENCES

Elistratova, A. A. Angliiskii roman epokhi Prosveshcheniia. Moscow, 1966. Pages 31—44.
Connely, W. Sir Richard Steele. Port Washington, N.Y., 1967.
Hare, M. E. Richard Steele and the Sentimental Comedy. New York, 1970.