George Steevens, the Shakesperian commentator, who was born on the 10th of May 1736, was the only son of George Steevens of Stepney, for many years an East India captain, and afterwards a Director of the East India Company. He received his early education at a school at Kingston-on-Thames and at Eton. In 1753 he was admitted a fellow-commoner of King's College, Cambridge, but left the University without taking a degree. In 1766 he published a reprint in four octavo volumes of Twenty of the Plays of Shakespeare, being the whole number printed in quarto during his Lifetime, etc.; and in 1773 he brought out, in association with Dr. Johnson, an edition of the whole of Shakespeare's dramatic works. Steevens, who was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and of the Society of Antiquaries, died unmarried at Hampstead on the 22nd of January 1800, and was buried in the chapel at Poplar, where a monument by Flaxman was erected to his memory.

Steevens collected a fine library, which was very rich in early English poetry and in the plays and poems of Shakespeare. It contained the first and second folios of the great dramatist, and upwards of forty copies of the separate plays in quarto, many of them being first editions. The second folio formerly belonged to King Charles I., and was given by him on the night before his execution to Sir Thomas Herbert, his Groom of the Bedchamber. This very interesting volume, in which the King has written 'Dum spiro spero C.R.,' was bought at the sale of Steevens's books for King George III. for eighteen guineas, and is now preserved in the Royal Library at Windsor. The collection also comprised some rare plays of Peele, Marlowe, and Nash; Barnabe Googe's Eglogs, Epytaphes and Sonnettes; Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, London, 1589; Skelton's Lyttle Workes and Merie Tales; Watson's Passionate Centurie of Love; England's Helicon, collected by John Bodenham, London, 1600; Breton's Workes of a young Wyt; The Paradice of Dainty Devises, London, 1595; XII Mery fests of the Wyddow Edyth, London, 1573; and many other scarce and choice books.

Steevens's library was sold by auction by Mr. King at his great room, King Street, Covent Garden, on May 13th, 1800, and ten following days. The catalogue contained nineteen hundred and forty-three lots, which realised two thousand seven hundred and forty pounds, fifteen shillings. A copy of the catalogue marked with the prices of the books and the names of the purchasers is preserved in the British Museum.

Although Dibdin considered that 'enormous sums were given for some volumes that cost Steevens not a twentieth part of their produce,' the prices were very small compared with those which could be obtained for the same books at the present time. The first folio of Shakespeare's works fetched only twenty-two pounds, and Charles I.'s copy of the second folio, as already mentioned, but eighteen guineas. Of the first editions of the separate quarto plays, Othello sold for twenty-nine pounds, eight shillings; King Lear and the Merry Wives of Windsor for twenty-eight pounds each; Henry the Fifth for twenty-seven pounds, six shillings; A Midsummer Night's Dream for twenty-five pounds, ten shillings; and Much Ado about Nothing for the same sum. The first edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets went for three pounds, nineteen shillings. Steevens's copies of the Merry Wives of Windsor and the Sonnets fetched respectively three hundred and thirty guineas and two hundred and fifteen guineas at the sale of the library of George Daniel in 1864. Other prices obtained for some of the rare books were eleven pounds, fifteen shillings for England's Helicon; ten pounds, fifteen shillings for Barnabe Googe's Eglogs, Epytaphes and Sonnettes; and seven pounds, ten shillings for Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie.

Steevens, who led a very retired life in his house at Hampstead Heath, was the reverse of an amiable man; and while he was very polite and courteous to his literary friends in private, he made bitter attacks upon them in print. Dibdin says of him that 'his habits were indeed peculiar: not much to be envied or imitated; as they sometimes betrayed the flights of a madman, and sometimes the asperities of a cynic. His attachments were warm, but fickle both in choice and duration. He would frequently part from one, with whom he had lived on terms of close intimacy, without any assignable cause; and his enmities, once fixed, were immovable.' Dr. Parr said of him that 'he was one of the wisest, most learned, but most spiteful of men.' Dr. Johnson, however, thought 'he was mischievous, but not malignant.'