Author: Steers, H.
Biography:
STEERS, H. (fl 1802-3)
“H. Steers, Gent.” published two poetical works in Yorkshire: an elegy for the Duke of Bedford (8 pages, printed by J. Etherington at Driffield in 1802) and the much more ambitious Aesop’s Fables, published at Hull, which was dedicated to the Earl of Carlisle, Lord Lieutenant of the East Riding, and was intended for schools as well as for private libraries. Besides the general dedication, many of the fables are dedicated to named persons, mostly of Yorkshire but a few of London and elsewhere. One dedicated “To My Own Family” hints at an unhappy history (“Parental bonds too quick I fled”) and one to William Ellis of Durham (“Friend of my youth”) suggests a connection with that county. The London booksellers of the Fables—which, never saw a second edition—were J. Harris, successor to E. Newbery, and E. Williams. The poems are accomplished and moderately scholarly; the author might have been, for instance, a schoolmaster. But no public records have been found for H. Steers in Yorkshire or Durham. It seems that for one reason or another his name did not leave a mark there. A more remote possibility is that he was not originally of the north of England but was a Londoner associated with the patent liniment “Dr. Steers’s Opodeldoc,” sold by Francis Newbery and his successors from 1786, and in Yorkshire by J. Etherington of Driffield, among others. (Etherington like many booksellers also sold patent medicines and writing supplies; some directories list him simply as a druggist.) In that case he was probably the son of William and Susanna (Kent) Steers born on 16 Feb. 1741 and baptised on 6 Mar. at St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, who married Sarah Buzzard on 8 Jan. 1788 at St. Luke’s, Chelsea, and settled in Chiswick. She is named as an executrix in his will and charged with the publication of his “literary works” whether published or in manuscript. In 1794 he was running a “Medicine Warehouse” on Old Bond St. and one family history gives that as his place of death almost twenty years later. But since the depth of local knowledge in the Fables indicates a long association with the north, it is possible that H. Steers of Hull and Henry Steers of Chiswick are two different men. (ancestry.com 28 Nov. 2024; findmypast.com 28 Nov. 2024; “Dr. Steers’s Opodeldoc,” thequackdoctor.com; Hull Packet 8 Nov. 1803) HJ