George Steevens extracts from Sowdon of Babylon, after 1736 | Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Steevens, George (1736-1800)
Greg, W. W. (1875-1959)

George Steevens (1736-1800), a native of London, attended Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, returning to London without a degree in 1756. Steevens assisted with Samuel Johnson's The Plays of William Shakespeare (1765) and issued his own edtion, Twenty of the Plays of Shakespeare, in 1766; the two collaborated on a further edition of Shakespeare's plays, first published in 1773. In addition to his Shakespearean scholarship, Steevens was notorious for the numerous hoaxes and pranks he played on his friends and colleagues.

Source

Sherbo, Arthur. "Steevens, George (1736-1800)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online edition. Oxford University Press, 2006. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/26355