Sir Richard Steele, a British author, born in Dublin in 1671, died at Llangunnor, near Carmarthen, Wales, Sept. 1,1729. He received his early education at the. Charterhouse, where his intimacy with Addison was formed. In 1691 he entered Merton college, Oxford, but left at the expiration of three years without taking a degree, enlisted as a private in the horse guards, and reached the rank of captain in Lucas's fusileers, an appointment due to his colonel, Lord Cutts, to whom he had dedicated "The Christian Hero" (1701). In odd contrast with this work was his comedy of " The Funeral, or Grief a la Mode" (1702), which was followed by " The Tender Husband" (1703), and "The Lying Lover" (1704). He was appointed " gazetteer" and gentleman usher to Prince George of Denmark, and derived ample means from two wealthy marriages (the last in 1707), but was always in pecuniary trouble through reckless expenditure and dissipation, his life being passed, as he says, in "sinning and repenting." In 1709 he commenced the " Tatler," for which Addison furnished many of the leading papers, though by no means so many as Steele, whom he now assisted to the appointment of a commissioner of the stamp office.

With the overthrow of the whigs in 1710 he lost his office of gazetteer, and with it the means of supplying the items of official news which at first formed an important feature in the "Tatler." This paper was accordingly succeeded in 1711 by the "Spectator," written chiefly by Steele and Addison, and subsequently by the " Guardian," begun and ended in 1713, and the " Lover," the "Beader," and other periodicals which had but a brief existence. In 1713 Steele resigned his office, and was returned to parliament from Stockbridge in Hampshire; but for writing articles in the " Crisis " and the " Englishman," adjudged to have been libels against her majesty's administration, he was expelled by a vote of 245 to 152. His pen, however, continued to be actively employed in the whig interest, and on the accession of George I. he received several profitable appointments, was knighted, and elected to parliament from Boronghbridge. In 1722 he produced his last and best comedv, "The Conscious Lovers," which proved completely successful, and brought him in ample receipts; but he was soon reduced to straits again. A paralytic attack rendered him incapable of further literary labor, and he retired to a small estate near Carmarthen left him by his second wife, where he died almost forgotten by his contemporaries.

He first conceived the characters of Sir Roger de Coverley, Will Honeycomb, and others of the Spectator club, which received their finishing touches from the hand of Addison. His letters to his wife, about 400 in number, form one of the most singular correspondences ever published. - There is an elaborate treatise on the character and genius of Steele in Forster's " Historical and Biographical Essays" (2 vols., London, 1858); and Thackeray, in his "Lectures on the English Humorists," has treated the same subject at length. See also "Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Sir Richard Steele," with his correspondence, by II. R. Montgomery (2 vols. 8vo, London, 1865).