Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison (1 May 1672 – 17 June 1719) was a British writer and politician. He was the eldest son of Lancelot Addison. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend Richard Steele, with whom he founded The Spectator magazine. His simple prose style marked the end of the mannerisms and conventional classical images of the 17th century. Addison is also famous for his play Cato, a Tragedy, written in 1712.

Addison was born on 1 May 1672, in Milston, Wiltshire, but soon after his birth his father, Lancelot Addison, was appointed Dean of Lichfield and the family moved into the cathedral close. His father was a scholarly English clergyman. Joseph was educated at Charterhouse School, London, where he first met Richard Steele, and at The Queen's College, Oxford. He excelled in classics, being specially noted for his Neo-Latin verse, and became a fellow of Magdalen College.

In 1693, he addressed a poem to John Dryden, and his first major work, a book of the lives of English poets, was published in 1694. His translation of Virgil's Georgics was published in the same year. Dryden, Lord Somers and Charles Montague, 1st Earl of Halifax, took an interest in Addison's work and obtained for him a pension of £300 a year to enable him to travel to Europe with a view to diplomatic employment, all the time writing and studying politics.