Stephen's most monumental achievement was serving as founding editor of the Dictionary of National Biography (1882–1891), for which he wrote hundreds of entries himself, establishing a landmark of biographical scholarship. His major works include The Playground of Europe (1871), a classic of mountaineering literature; Hours in a Library (1874–1879), a celebrated three-volume collection of literary essays; The History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876), a pioneering work of intellectual history; and The Science of Ethics (1882), which applied evolutionary theory to moral philosophy. His later publications include An Agnostic's Apology (1893) and Studies of a Biographer (1898–1902). Stephen was knighted in 1902 and died in London in 1904.
Leslie Stephen
Sir Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) was an English author, critic, biographer, and mountaineer, best remembered today as the father of novelist Virginia Woolf. Educated at Eton and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he served as a fellow and mathematics tutor before resigning in 1862 over religious doubts, thereafter becoming a prominent agnostic and freethinker. Stephen began his literary career as a journalist and critic, contributing to and later editing the Cornhill Magazine from 1871 to 1882. He was also a passionate Alpine climber, serving as president of the Alpine Club.