He and his wife Esther Baker Steele were important textbook writers of their period, on subjects including American history, chemistry, human physiology, physics, astronomy, and zoology.

In the preface to his posthumous Popular Physics, the publisher writes that his books "attained an extraordinary degree of popularity, due to the author's attractive style, his great skill in the selection of material suited to the demands of the schools for which the books were intended, his sympathetic spirit toward both teachers and pupils, and his earnest Christian character, which was exhibited in all his writing."

Born May 14, 1836, in Lima, New York, he became a country schoolteacher at the age of 17, leaving that position after an outbreak of typhoid fever killed his mother in 1851.

Attempts have been made to reach this class by omitting or disguising the nomenclature; but this robs the science of its mathematical beauty and discipline, while it does not fit the student to read other chemical works or to understand their formulae."

Encouraged by the enthusiastic reception from educators, Steele expanded his efforts to produce an entire series of Fourteen Weeks science textbooks.