STEEVENS, GEORGE (1736–1800), commentator on Shakespeare, was born at Poplar on 10 May 1736, and was baptised at Stepney parish church nine days later. He was only child of George Steevens and his wife Mary Perryman. The father, although described as ‘mariner’ in the baptismal register, was a well-to-do captain in the East India Company's fleet, who on retirement from active service occupied a substantial residence at Poplar, was elected a vestryman in 1746, obtained a seat as director of the East India Company, and died in January 1768 (cf. Gent. Mag. 1768, p. 93, where he apparently figures in the obituary as ‘Thomas Stevens, esq., formerly an East India captain’). In early years George attended a school at Kingston-on-Thames, whence he passed to Eton. He was admitted a fellow-commoner of King's College, Cambridge, on 29 March 1753, matriculating on 14 April following. He resided in the college till the summer of 1756. Although he read the classics and English literature assiduously, he left the university without a degree. He showed some interest in his college at later periods, and paid a visit to friends at Cambridge almost every autumn until his death. But his perversity of temper never rendered him a very welcome guest.
Steevens inherited from his father a competence and some real property in the neighbourhood of Poplar. When his student days closed he settled in London, at first apparently in chambers in the Temple. But he soon secured a house (formerly a tavern) at Hampstead, called the Upper Flask, near the summit of the Heath. A cousin, Mrs. Mary Collinson (born Steevens), with her daughters, kept house for him there for the rest of his life. Very methodical in his habits, he walked into London before seven each morning and paid visits to literary friends, bookshops, and publishing offices, returning on foot early in the afternoon. At his Hampstead residence he brought together a valuable library, mainly consisting of Elizabethan literature, and a fine collection of the engravings of Hogarth. ‘Mr. Steevens,’ wrote Malone to Lord Charlemont on 18 June 1781, ‘has gone so far as not only to collect a complete set of the first and best impressions of all his [i.e. Hogarth's] plates, but also the last and worst of the retouched ones, by way of contrast, to show at the same time all the varieties, and to set the value of the former in a more conspicuous light’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. App. x. 383). In June 1781 he ‘ransacked’ Mrs. Hogarth's house for obsolete and unfinished plates (Walpole, Corresp. viii. 55). In the same year he made contributions to Nichols's ‘Biographical Anecdotes of Mr. Hogarth,’ and his accumulated notes on the subject were incorporated after his death in ‘The Genuine Works of Hogarth’ (1808–17); on the title-page his name figured in conjunction with Nichols's. Steevens was himself a capable draughtsman, and he made many clever sketches of churches or copies of old pictures and engravings. An etching by him of an old woman named Mary Keighley is in the print-room of the British Museum.
But the main business of Steevens's life was the systematic study and annotation of Shakespeare's works. With a view to the formation on sound principles of a correct text, he directed his earliest labours to a careful reprint of twenty of the quarto editions of Shakespeare's plays, many of which he borrowed for the purpose from Garrick's library. Steevens inaccurately claimed that this reprint, which appeared in four octavo volumes in 1766 and included the sonnets, dealt with ‘the whole number’ of Shakespeare's plays ‘printed in quarto in his lifetime.’ Dr. Johnson, whose edition of Shakespeare had appeared a year earlier, was impressed by the intelligence that Steevens's useful venture displayed. The two men met in the Temple, and Johnson readily accepted Steevens's offer to prepare a more fully annotated version of his edition of Shakespeare. Steevens sent to the newspapers a prospectus describing his design, and appealed to the reading public for suggestions. He promised that his publisher (Tonson) should make payment on his behalf to ‘those whose situation in life will not admit of their making presents of their labours,’ and he undertook to treat respectfully the efforts of earlier commentators. But that counsel of perfection he was constitutionally incapable of observing. Johnson's share in the enterprise was confined to advice. On 21 March 1770 he invited his friend Farmer to supplement ‘an account of all the translations that Shakespeare might have seen, by Mr. Steevens, a very ingenious gentleman, lately of King's College.’ The edition appeared, with both Johnson's and Steevens's names on the title-page, in ten volumes in 1773. The younger man brought to his task exceptional diligence, method, and antiquarian knowledge of literature. His illustrative quotations from rare contemporary literature were apter and more abundant than any to be met with elsewhere. But his achievement exhibited ingrained defects of taste and temper. He spoke scornfully of the labours of many predecessors, and especially of those of Edward Capell,
