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Addison, Joseph (1672-1719), English essayist, poet, and statesman, whose work, particularly in the periodicals The Tatler and The Spectator, strongly influenced 18th-century English taste and opinion.
Addison was born on May 1, 1672, in Milston, Wiltshire, and educated at the University of Oxford, where he distinguished himself as a classical scholar and later became a fellow. In 1699 he was granted a government pension, which he used to travel through Europe. In 1704, about a year after his return to England, Addison was commissioned by the government to write a poem celebrating the British victory that same year at the Battle of Blenheim, in the War of the Spanish Succession. His composition, “The Campaign” (1705), was such an aid to the Whig party, which was then seeking control of the British government, that his position in both politics and letters was firmly established. From 1708 to 1710 Addison served in Parliament as a Whig. In 1709 he became a contributor to The Tatler, a periodical founded by his friend the essayist Sir Richard Steele. Two years later, Steele and Addison founded another periodical, The Spectator, for which Addison subsequently wrote the finest of his many essays. Addison's literary reputation reached its highest point in 1713, when his tragedy Cato was produced in London. It was translated into several languages, and such influential critics as the French writer and philosopher Voltaire pronounced it the finest tragedy in the English language. In the opinion of most critics today, however, this play, an artificial and undramatic work, was overestimated by Addison's contemporaries.
Addison's literary reputation has suffered a decline since his own time, when he was widely considered the most important of English authors. He influenced the literary taste of the 18th-century, in part by resurrecting the neglected ballad form in essays in The Spectator. He is now remembered mainly as one of the founders of the modern familiar essay and as a prose stylist of polish, grace, and elegance. Addison's poetry is now read mostly as a typical product of his period, and his dramatic works are rarely produced.
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Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729), English essayist, playwright, and statesman, who founded and contributed frequently to the influential 18th-century journal the Spectator.
Steele was born in March 1672 in Dublin and educated at the University of Oxford. He entered the army in 1694 and during his term of military service wrote three comic dramas, The Funeral (1701), The Lying Lover (1703), which ran for only six nights, and The Tender Husband (1705). In 1707 Steele was appointed by the English statesman Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, to edit the London Gazette, an official government publication.
On April 12, 1709, Steele brought out, under the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff, the first issue of The Tatler, a triweekly journal featuring essays and brief sketches on politics and society. In addition to his own essays, Steele published in the The Tatler a number of papers by the English essayist Joseph Addison, whom he had met during his school days and who became an important colleague and friend. This publication was succeeded on March 1, 1711, by the more famous The Spectator with both Steele and Addison as contributors. Many of the ideas for articles were Steele's, with Addison filling in the details and polishing the prose. Perhaps the best-known portion of The Spectator comprises a series of essays known as the Sir Roger de Coverley papers, which, in the person of a kindly and eccentric old country gentleman, present an idealized portrait of the 18th-century English squire. This character was conceived by Steele and named after an old English dance. When the last issue of The Spectator appeared on December 6, 1712, Steele had contributed 236 papers and Addison 274. Steele's next journalistic venture, the Guardian, started in 1713, lasted for 176 issues, and was succeeded by several periodicals, notably The Englishman (1713).
In these later undertakings, Steele, an ardent Whig, involved himself in violent controversy with the Tories, who then controlled the government. He entered Parliament as a Whig but was expelled in 1714 on the charge of having committed seditious libel in his pamphlet The Crisis, in which he advocated the succession to the British throne of the pro-Whig elector of Hanover, later King George I. Political disagreements tore apart the friendship of Addison and Steele in 1718. After the death of Queen Anne and the accession of George I later that year, Steele was re-elected to Parliament, knighted, and made a justice of the peace, surveyor of the royal stables, and governor of the Theatre Royal of Drury Lane. There his last and most successful comedy, The Conscious Lovers, was produced in 1722. Steele's taste for good living kept him in continuous financial difficulty. In 1724, because of heavy debts, he retired to Wales. He died there on September 1, 1729.
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