STEPHEN, Sir LESLIE ( 1832-1904). An Eng lish biographer and critic, son of Sir James Ste phen. He was born in London and was educated at Eton and at King's College, London, and Trin ity Ilall, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1854 (M. A. 1357) and remained as fellow and tutor until 1864. In that year he went to London and engaged in literary work, writing much for lead ing periodicals. lIis first wife (died 1S75) was a daughter of Thaekeray. In 1865 he published Sketches front Cambridge, reprinted from the Pall Mall Ga.-;ette„ and in 1871 became editor of the Corn/till Maga,:ine. the reputation of which he maintained by securing such contributors as Stevenson, Hardy, and Henry James. He re signed this post in 1S82 to undertake the editor ship of the Dictionary of National Biography, which, though ill health forced to hand the management over to Sidney Lee in 1891, will always be a monument to his scholarship and judgment. He wrote nearly four hundred of the articles himself, including Addison, Burns, By ron, Carlyle, Coleridge, Dickens, George Eliot, Fielding, Gibbon, Hume, Johnson, Milton, Pope, Scott. Swift, Thaekeray, and Wordsworth. Prac tically all his work on the Dictionary was excel lent, but his type of mind and literary method achieved the happier results, perhaps, with the eighteenth-century subjects. For a year (18S3)
lie held the Clark lectureship in English litera ture at Cambridge. In addition to biography and literature Stephen showed a keen interest in phi losophy and ethics. In this field he was utilitarian and fortified his position with an irony, a subtle ty of thought, and a trenchantly critical method that won him high regard among literary men and scholars at the expense, perhaps, of popular ity. His works include: Hours in a Library (three series, 1874-76-79). able and impartial criticisms about which there plays a delightful humor; The History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876, new ed. 1902) ; Es says on Freethinking and Plain Speaking (1879) The Science of Ethics (1832), widely used as a text-book; Life of Henry Fawcett (1335) ; An Agnostic's Apology Life of Sir James Ed.:joules Stephen (1895), his brother; Social Rights and Duties ( 1896 ) ; ,St udics• of a Biog rapher ( 1ti9S) ; The English Utilitarians ( 1900 ) ; and, in the "English Men of Letters" series, lives of Swift, Pope, Johnson, Hobbes, and George Eliot. Stephen was knighted in 1902.