Alexander Pope (Hardbound - 1995)

Alexander Pope (1688-1744), was a famous English essayist, critic, satirist, and one of the greatest poets of enlightenment. He showed his precocious metrical skill in his ‘Pastorals’, written when he was just 16. His breakthrough work Essay on Criticism made him known to Addison’s circle, and his Messiah was published in the Spectator in 1712. The Rape of the Lock appeared in Lintot’s Miscellanies in the same year, and its enlarged edition was published in 1714. In 1717 he brought a collection of works containing his two poems on the passion of love. In 1723, four years after Addison’s death appeared Pope’s portrait of Atticus, whose extended version was published as ‘A Fragment of a Satire’ in 1727.

The book describes Pope’s early years and his literary career spanning nearly 30 years. Pope’s life at Twickenham, where he moved in 1718 with his mother and spent the rest of his life, devoting time to his garden and writing, has been portrayed.

In Essay on Man (1733-34) Pope examined the human condition against Miltonic, cosmic background. This dramatic work suggested that humankind is a part of nature and the diversity of living forms. An exclusive chapter has been devoted to the landmark work. Pope’s epistles and satires have been studied from a critic’s perspective.

The book will be highly useful to the students, teachers and researchers of English literature. To those having interest in Pope and his works, it will provide for a richly rewarding reading.

Leslie Stephen was educated at Eton, King’s College in London and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. His literary career began in 1864, when he went to London and wrote for periodicals including The Saturday Review and Fraser’s Magazine. Stephen continued his contribution to criticism with studies of Johnson (1878), Pope (1880), Swift (1882), George Eliot (1902) and Thomas Hobbes (1904) for the English Men of Letters series.