George Steevens

Author

1736 – 1800

20

Who was George Steevens?

George Steevens was an English Shakespearean commentator.

He was born at Poplar, the son of a captain and later director of the East India Company. He was educated at Eton College and at King's College, Cambridge, where he remained from 1753 to 1756. Leaving the university without a degree, he settled in chambers in the Inner Temple, moving later to a house on Hampstead Heath, where he collected a valuable library, rich in Elizabethan literature. He also accumulated a large collection of Hogarth prints, and his notes on the subject were incorporated in John Nichols's Genuine Works of Hogarth.

He walked from Hampstead to London every morning before seven o'clock, discussed Shakespearian questions with his friend, Isaac Reed, and, after making his daily round of the booksellers shops, returned to Hampstead. He began his work as a Shakespearean editor with reprints of the quarto editions of Shakespeare's plays, entitled Twenty of the Plays of Shakespeare .... Samuel Johnson was impressed by this work, and suggested that Steevens should prepare a complete edition of Shakespeare.

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Born
May 10, 1736
Poplar, London
Education
  • King's College, Cambridge
  • Eton College
Died
Jan 22, 1800
Hampstead

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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