Pope, Alexander, 1688–1744, English poet. Although his literary reputation declined somewhat during the 19th cent., he is now recognized as the greatest poet of the 18th cent. and the greatest verse satirist in English.

Life

Pope was born in London of Roman Catholic parents and moved to Binfield in 1700. During his later childhood he was afflicted by a tubercular condition known as Pott's disease that ruined his health and produced a pronounced spinal curvature. He never grew taller than 4 ft 6 in. (1.4 m). His religion debarred him from a Protestant education and from the age of 12 he was almost entirely self-taught.

Although he is known for his literary quarrels, Pope never lacked close friends. In his early years he won the attention of William Wycherley Wycherley, William (wĭch`ərlē), 1640?–1716, English dramatist, b. near Shrewsbury.
..... Click the link for more information. and the poet-critic William Walsh, among others. Before he was 17 Pope was admitted to London society and encouraged as a prodigy. The shortest lived of his friendships was with Joseph Addison Addison, Joseph, 1672–1719, English essayist, poet, and statesman. He was educated at Charterhouse, where he was a classmate of Richard Steele, and at Oxford, where he became a distinguished classical scholar.
..... Click the link for more information. and his coterie, who eventually insidiously attacked Pope's Tory leanings. His attachment to the Tory party was strengthened by his warm friendship with Swift Swift, Jonathan, 1667–1745, English author, b. Dublin. He is widely recognized as one of the greatest satirists in the English language.

Early Life and Works

..... Click the link for more information. and his involvement with the Scriblerus Club Scriblerus Club, English literary group formed about 1713 to satirize "all the false tastes in learning." Among its chief members were Arbuthnot, Gay, Thomas Parnell, Pope, and Swift. Meetings of the club were discontinued after 1714.
..... Click the link for more information. .

Works

Pope's poetry basically falls into three periods. The first includes the early descriptive poetry; the Pastorals (1709); Windsor Forest (1713); the Essay on Criticism (1711), a poem written in heroic couplets outlining critical tastes and standards; The Rape of the Lock (1714), a mock-heroic poem ridiculing the fashionable world of his day; contributions to the Guardian; and "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady" and "Eloise to Abelard," the only pieces he ever wrote dealing with love. In about 1717 Pope formed attachments to Martha Blount, a relationship that lasted his entire life, and to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 1689–1762, English author, noted primarily for her highly descriptive letters. She was the daughter of the first duke of Kingston. In 1712 she married Edward Wortley Montagu, who became ambassador to Turkey in 1716.
..... Click the link for more information. , with whom he later quarreled bitterly.

Pope's second period includes his magnificent, if somewhat inaccurate, translations of Homer, written in heroic couplets; the completed edition of the Iliad (1720); and the Odyssey (1725–26), written with William Broome and Elijah Fenton Fenton, Elijah, 1683–1730, English poet. A graduate of Cambridge, he was a schoolmaster for a time and later was a tutor in several noble families. He is chiefly remembered for his share in Pope's translation of the Odyssey (1725).
..... Click the link for more information. . These translations, along with Pope's unsatisfactory edition of Shakespeare (1725), amassed him a large fortune. In 1719 he bought a lease on a house in Twickenham where he and his mother lived for the rest of their lives.

In the last period of his career Pope turned to writing satires and moral poems. These include The Dunciad (1728–43), a scathing satire on dunces and literary hacks in which Pope viciously attacked his enemies, including Lewis Theobald Theobald, Lewis (tĭb`əld, thē`ōbôld), 1688–1744, English author.
..... Click the link for more information. , the critic who had ridiculed Pope's edition of Shakespeare, and the playwright Colley Cibber Theophilus Cibber, 1703–58, and his daughter,

Charlotte (Cibber) Clarke, d. 1760?, went on the stage with some success, earning wild and eccentric reputations in the tradition of the family.
..... Click the link for more information. ; Imitations of Horace (1733–38), satirizing social follies and political corruption; An Essay on Man (1734), a poetic summary of current philosophical speculation, his most ambitious work; Moral Essays (1731–35); and the "Epistle to Arbuthnot" (1735), a defense in poetry of his life and his work.

Bibliography

See the Twickenham edition of his poems (7 vol., 1951–61); his prose works ed. by N. Ault (1936, repr. 1968); his letters ed. by G. Sherburn (5 vol., 1956); biographies by G. Sherburn (1934, repr. 1963), N. Ault (1949, repr. 1967), P. Quennell (1968), and M. Maynard (1988); studies by G. Tillotson (1946; 2d ed. 1950; and 1958), F. W. Bateson and N. A. Joukovsky, ed. (1972), J. P. Russo (1972), P. Dixon, ed. (1973), F. M. Keener (1974), D. B. Morris (1984), L. Damrosch, Jr. (1987), and R. A. Brower (1986).

Pope, Alexander

Alexander Pope, portrait by Thomas Hudson; in the National Portrait Gallery, London

(credit: Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)

(born May 21, 1688, London, Eng.—died May 30, 1744, Twickenham, near London) English poet and satirist. A precocious boy precluded from formal education by his Roman Catholicism, Pope was mainly self-educated. A deformity of the spine and other health problems limited his growth and physical activities, leading him to devote himself to reading and writing. His first major work was An Essay on Criticism (1711), a poem on the art of writing that contains several brilliant epigrams (e.g., “To err is human, to forgive, divine”). His witty mock-epic The Rape of the Lock (1712, 1714) ridicules fashionable society. The great labour of his life was his verse translation of Homer's Iliad (1720) and Odyssey (1726), whose success made him financially secure. He became involved in many literary battles, prompting him to write poems such as the scathing mock-epic The Dunciad (1728) and An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1735). The philosophical An Essay on Man (1733–34) was intended as part of a larger work that he never completed.