(An English squire of Queen Anne's reign, Sir Roger exempl...)
An English squire of Queen Anne's reign, Sir Roger exemplified the values of an old country gentleman, and was portrayed as lovable but somewhat ridiculous ('rather beloved than esteemed'), making his Tory politics seem harmless but silly. He was said to be the grandson of the man who invented the dance.
The Commerce of Everyday Life: Selections from The Tatler and The Spectator (Bedford Cultural Editions)
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This volume offers a selection of essays from The Tatle...)
This volume offers a selection of essays from The Tatler and The Spectator (1709-1714). The accompanying texts include excerpts from other periodicals such as The Guardian, The London Spy, and The Female Tatler; advertisements; and selections by Defoe, Ward, Flecknoe, Gay, Mandville, Pope, and Swift. A general introduction providing historical and cultural background, a chronolgy of Addison's and Steele's lives and times, an introduction to each thematic group of documents, headnotes, extensive annotations, a selected bibliography, and illustrations make this volume a unique scholarly edition of the periodical papers that helped define eighteenth-century culture and standards.
The British essayist, dramatist, and politician Sir Richard Steele is best known for his collaboration with Addison on a series of essays for the Tatler and the Spectator.
Background
Steele was born on March 12, 1672 in Dublin, Ireland to Richard Steele, an attorney, and Elinor Symes (née Sheyles); his sister Katherine was born the previous year. Steele was largely raised by his uncle and aunt, Henry Gascoigne and Lady Katherine Mildmay.
Education
A member of the Protestant gentry, Steele was educated at Charterhouse School, where he first met Addison. Their schoolboy friendship was continued at the university, and probably helped to give a more serious turn to Steele's mind than his natural temperament would have taken under different companionship. Both Steele and Addison went to Oxford, Steele entering Christ Church in 1689 and transferring to Merton College in 1691. His Oxford career was undistinguished, and he left in 1692 without taking a degree in order to volunteer for cadet service under the command of the Duke of Ormonde.
Career
In 1706 Steele was appointed to a position in the household of Prince George of Denmark, consort of Anne, Queen of Great Britain. He also gained the favour of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford.
Steele became a Whig Member of Parliament in 1713, for Stockbridge. He was soon expelled for issuing a pamphlet in favour of the Hanoverian succession. When George I of Great Britain came to the throne in the following year, Steele was knighted and given responsibility for the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London. He returned to parliament in 1715, for Boroughbridge.
While at Drury Lane, Steele wrote and directed the sentimental comedy The Conscious Lovers, which was an immediate hit. However, he fell out with Addison and with the administration over the Peerage Bill (1719), and in 1724 he retired to his wife's homeland of Wales, where he spent the remainder of his life.
Steele was a member of the Kit-Kat Club. Both Steele and Addison became closely associated with Child's Coffee-house in St Paul's Churchyard.
Steele's first published work, The Christian Hero (1701), attempted to point out the differences between perceived and actual masculinity. Written while Steele served in the army, it expressed his idea of a pamphlet of moral instruction. The Christian Hero was ultimately ridiculed for what some thought was hypocrisy because Steele did not necessarily follow his own preaching. Steele wrote a comedy that same year titled The Funeral. This play met with wide success and was performed at Drury Lane, bringing him to the attention of the King and the Whig party. Next, Steele wrote The Lying Lover, one of the first sentimental comedies, but a failure on stage. In 1705, Steele wrote The Tender Husband with contributions from Addison's, and later that year wrote the prologue to The Mistake, by John Vanbrugh, also an important member of the Whig Kit-Kat Club with Addison and Steele.
The Tatler, Steele's first journal, first came out on 12 April 1709, and appeared three times a week: on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Steele wrote this periodical under the pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaff and gave Bickerstaff an entire, fully developed personality. Steele described his motive in writing The Tatler as "to expose the false arts of life, to pull off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and to recommend a general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and our behavior". Steele founded the magazine, and although he and Addison collaborated, Steele wrote the majority of the essays; Steele wrote roughly 188 of the 271 total and Addison 42, with 36 representing the pair's collaborative works. While Addison contributed to The Tatler, it is widely regarded as Steele's work. The Tatler was closed down to avoid the complications of running a Whig publication that had come under Tory attack. Addison and Steele then founded The Spectator in 1711 and also the Guardian in 1713.
Steele defended eloquently the principles of the Whig party - specifically the constitutional principles which grew out of the Revolution of 1688 and the social philosophy of the Whig moneyed men.
Connections
In 1705, Steele married a widow, Margaret Stretch, who died in the following year. At her funeral he met his second wife, Mary Scurlock, whom he nicknamed "Prue" and married in 1707. In the course of their courtship and marriage, he wrote over 400 letters to her. Mary died in 1718, at a time when she was considering separation. Their daughter, Elizabeth (Steele's only surviving legitimate child), married John Trevor, 3rd Baron Trevor. Steele had an illegitimate child, Elizabeth Ousley, whom he later adopted.