Chapter Stedman to Stephen of S by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

Stephen, Sir James (1789-1859).—Statesman and historical writer, son of James Stephen, Master in Chancery, ed. at Cambridge, and called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn 1811. After practising with success, accepted appointment of permanent counsel to Colonial Office and Board of Trade 1825, and was subsequently, 1826-47, permanent Under-Sec. for the Colonies, in which capacity he exercised an immense influence on the colonial policy of the empire, and did much to bring about the abolition of the slave trade. Impaired health led to his resignation, when he was made K.C.B. and a Privy Councillor. He was afterwards Professor of Modern History at Cambridge 1849-59, and of the same subject at the East India College at Haileybury 1855-57. He wrote Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography (1849) and Lectures on the History of France (1852).

Stephen, Sir Leslie (1832-1904).—Biographer and critic, son of the above, was born in London, and ed. at Eton, King’s College, London, and Cambridge, where he obtained a tutorial Fellowship, and took orders. He came under the influence of Mill, Darwin, and H. Spencer, and devoted himself largely to the study of economics. His religious views having undergone a change, he gave up the clerical character and his Fellowship, and became a pronounced Agnostic. In 1865 he definitely adopted a literary career, and contributed to the Saturday Review, Fraser’s Magazine, and other periodicals. In 1873 he published a collection of his essays as Free Thinking and Plain Speaking, which he followed up with An Agnostic’s Apology (1893). He became editor in 1871 of the Cornhill Magazine, in which appeared the essays afterwards College as Hours in a Library (3 series, 1874-79). His chief work was The History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876-81). He also wrote Science of Ethics (1882), and biographies of Dr. Johnson (1878), Pope (1880), Swift (1882), and George Eliot (English Men of Letters Series). In 1882 he became editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, to which he devoted much labour, besides contributing many of the principal articles. The English Utilitarians appeared in 1900. As a biographical and critical writer he holds a very high place. His first wife was a daughter of Thackeray. In recognition of his literary eminence he was made a K.C.B.

Life and Letters by F. W. Maitland (1906).