Joel Dorman Steele (May 14, 1836 – May 25, 1886) was an American educator. He and his wife Esther 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."