A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z


Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

LINKS

http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/authors/pope.html

This link will connect you to the Selected Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope web site hosted by the University of Toronto. Here you will find a representative sample of Pope's poetry and his Preface to his translation of Homer's Iliad (1715)

http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/bailey/pope.htm

This link will connect you to the San Antonio College web site on Alexander Pope. It contains several of Pope's poems, essays, and a link to the University of Pennsylvania web site on Pope.

BIOGRAPHY

Born to a Catholic cloth merchant in London, Pope grew up in an era of anti-Catholic prejudice and was denied a university education. Consequently, he studied under independent teachers such as the Catholic convert and former Oxford don, Thomas Deane. Pope also was a victim of tuberculosis that left him in the words of Sir Joshua Reynolds "about four feet six high; very humpbacked and deformed." Nevertheless through the encouragement he received from William Wycherley, among others, Pope grew in stature as a poet and writer with the publication of Pastorals in 1709, his neo-classical Essay on Criticism (1711), and his bawdy mock epic The Rape of the Lock (1712). A translator of the Iliad and Odyssey, Pope emerged as the preeminent man of letters with his 1717 publication of his Collected Works. With his move to Twickenham, Pope shared an interest in horticulture with Lady Mary Wortley before entering into a lasting companionship with Martha Blount. Eventually in 1728 he published The Dunciad a satiric response to an attack of his edition of Shakespeare, followed by his Moral Essays (1731), and Essay on Man (1733-34). During his remaining years, Pope hosted the major literary figures of his age at his villa where he died on 21 May, 1744.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Baines, Paul. The Complete Critical Guide to Alexander Pope. New York: Routledge, 2000.

Batey, Mavis. Alexander Pope: The Poet and the Landscape. London: Barn Elm, 1999.

Gordon, I.R.F. A Preface to Pope. 2nd ed. New York: Longman, 1993.

Hammond, Brean S, Ed. Pope. New York: Longman, 1996.

Jackson, Wallace, and R. Paul Yoder, Eds. Critical Essays on Alexander Pope. New York: G.K. Hall, 1993.

McLaverty, J. Pope, Print, and Meaning. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Quintero, Rubin. Literate Culture: Pope's Rhetorical Art. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992.

Rosslyn, Felicity. Alexander Pope: A Literary Life. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990.

SECONDARY SOURCES BY CHAPTER