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10 unusual facts about Richard Steele


Anne-Marguerite Petit du Noyer

The materials scatterd up and down in these Letters furnished Sir Richard Steele with two Guardians upon the Life and Conduct of that famous Lady.

Curt McCune

Notably, he has trained with referee Richard Steele at the Sugar Ray Leonard Nevada Partners Center.

Do the needful

The Oxford English Dictionary lists examples of usage from 1709 (Richard Steele in the Tatler), 1771 (Samuel Foote in Maid of Bath), 1821 (Maria Edgeworth in a letter), 1831 (Walter Scott in his journal), 1929 (I. Colvin in his Life of Dyer), and 1992 (Jeff Torrington in Swing Hammer Swing!), the last likely used humorously.

Domestic tragedy

Domestic tragedy disappeared during the era of Restoration drama, when Neoclassicism dominated the stage, but it emerged again with the work of George Lillo and Sir Richard Steele in the eighteenth century.

Love letter

The love letter continued to be taught as a skill at the start of the eighteenth century, as in Richard Steele's Spectator.

Paul Lorrain

In a joint letter from Alexander Pope and Bolingbroke to Swift, dated December 1725, the ‘late ordinary’ is described ironically as the ‘great historiographer.’ The penitence of his clients is always described as so heartfelt that the latter are playfully called by Richard Steele ‘Lorrain's Saints’.

Paul Vaden

Vaden came on strong in the later rounds, and the referee, Richard Steele, stopped the fight with 27 seconds left in the 12th round.

Sir Robert Munro, 6th Baronet

Four English M.P.s joined Robert Munro and his colleague Patrick Haldane for the Scottish part of the commission's business, but they were greatly hindered by the dilatory ways of some members (including Sir Richard Steele, who was fined for non-attendance).

Steele Rudd

In 1889 he was transferred to the sheriff's office and in his spare time took up rowing and when he began writing a column on rowing in a weekly paper and needed a pseudonym he adopted "Steele Rudder", the first name from the English essayist Richard Steele, the second chosen because he wanted to bring into his name some part of a boat.

The History of Henry Esmond

Esmond meets many of the celebrated English writers of the day, such as Joseph Addison and Richard Steele.


1722 in literature

November 7 - Sir Richard Steele's "sentimental comedy" The Conscious Lovers (loosely based on Terence) opens at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London with an initial run of eighteen consecutive nights.

Abel Roper

When Richard Steele lost the post of gazetteer in October 1710, Roper, on whose behalf Lord Denbigh had written to Lord Dartmouth in June, was an unsuccessful candidate for the vacant post.

She Stoops to Conquer

When the play was first produced, it was discussed as an example of the revival of laughing comedy over the sentimental comedy seen as dominant on the English stage since the success of The Conscious Lovers, written by Sir Richard Steele in 1722.