Alexander Pope Popular Books

Alexander Pope Biography & Facts

Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, Pope is best known for his satirical and discursive poetry including The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad, and An Essay on Criticism, and for his translations of Homer. Pope is often quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, some of his verses having entered common parlance (e.g. "damning with faint praise" or "to err is human; to forgive, divine"). Life Alexander Pope was born in London on 21 May 1688 during the year of the Glorious Revolution. His father (Alexander Pope, 1646–1717) was a successful linen merchant in the Strand, London. His mother, Edith (née Turner, 1643–1733), was the daughter of William Turner, Esquire, of York. Both parents were Catholics. His mother's sister, Christiana, was the wife of famous miniature painter Samuel Cooper. Pope's education was affected by the recently enacted Test Acts, a series of English penal laws that upheld the status of the established Church of England, banning Catholics from teaching, attending a university, voting, and holding public office on penalty of perpetual imprisonment. Pope was taught to read by his aunt and attended Twyford School circa 1698. He also attended two Roman Catholic schools in London. Such schools, though still illegal, were tolerated in some areas.In 1700, his family moved to a small estate at Popeswood, in Binfield, Berkshire, close to the royal Windsor Forest. This was due to strong anti-Catholic sentiment and a statute preventing "Papists" from living within 10 miles (16 km) of London or Westminster. Pope would later describe the countryside around the house in his poem Windsor Forest. Pope's formal education ended at this time, and from then on, he mostly educated himself by reading the works of classical writers such as the satirists Horace and Juvenal, the epic poets Homer and Virgil, as well as English authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare and John Dryden. He studied many languages, reading works by French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. After five years of study, Pope came into contact with figures from London literary society such as William Congreve, Samuel Garth and William Trumbull.At Binfield he made many important friends. One of them, John Caryll (the future dedicatee of The Rape of the Lock), was twenty years older than the poet and had made many acquaintances in the London literary world. He introduced the young Pope to the ageing playwright William Wycherley and to William Walsh, a minor poet, who helped Pope revise his first major work, The Pastorals. There, he met the Blount sisters, Teresa and Martha (Patty), in 1707. He remained close friends with Patty until his death, but his friendship with Teresa ended in 1722. From the age of 12 he suffered numerous health problems, including Pott disease, a form of tuberculosis that affects the spine, which deformed his body and stunted his growth, leaving him with a severe hunchback. His tuberculosis infection caused other health problems including respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes and abdominal pain. He grew to a height of only 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 metres). Pope was already removed from society as a Catholic, and his poor health alienated him further. Although he never married, he had many female friends to whom he wrote witty letters, including Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. It has been alleged that his lifelong friend Martha Blount was his lover. His friend William Cheselden said, according to Joseph Spence, "I could give a more particular account of Mr. Pope's health than perhaps any man. Cibber's slander (of carnosity) is false. He had been gay [happy], but left that way of life upon his acquaintance with Mrs. B."In May 1709, Pope's Pastorals was published in the sixth part of bookseller Jacob Tonson's Poetical Miscellanies. This earned Pope instant fame and was followed by An Essay on Criticism, published in May 1711, which was equally well received. Around 1711, Pope made friends with Tory writers Jonathan Swift, Thomas Parnell and John Arbuthnot, who together formed the satirical Scriblerus Club. Its aim was to satirise ignorance and pedantry through the fictional scholar Martinus Scriblerus. He also made friends with Whig writers Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. In March 1713, Windsor Forest was published to great acclaim.During Pope's friendship with Joseph Addison, he contributed to Addison's play Cato, as well as writing for The Guardian and The Spectator. Around this time, he began the work of translating the Iliad, which was a painstaking process – publication began in 1715 and did not end until 1720.In 1714 the political situation worsened with the death of Queen Anne and the disputed succession between the Hanoverians and the Jacobites, leading to the Jacobite rising of 1715. Though Pope, as a Catholic, might have been expected to have supported the Jacobites because of his religious and political affiliations, according to Maynard Mack, "where Pope himself stood on these matters can probably never be confidently known". These events led to an immediate downturn in the fortunes of the Tories, and Pope's friend Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, fled to France. This was added to by the Impeachment of the former Tory Chief Minister Lord Oxford. Pope lived in his parents' house in Mawson Row, Chiswick, between 1716 and 1719; the red-brick building is now the Mawson Arms, commemorating him with a blue plaque.The money made from his translation of Homer allowed Pope to move in 1719 to a villa at Twickenham, where he created his now-famous grotto and gardens. The serendipitous discovery of a spring during the excavation of the subterranean retreat enabled it to be filled with the relaxing sound of trickling water, which would quietly echo around the chambers. Pope was said to have remarked, "Were it to have nymphs as well – it would be complete in everything." Although the house and gardens have long since been demolished, much of the grotto survives beneath Radnor House Independent Co-educational School. The grotto has been restored and will open to the public for 30 weekends a year from 2023 under the auspices of Pope's Grotto Preservation Trust. Poetry Essay on Criticism An Essay on Criticism was first published anonymously on 15 May 1711. Pope began writing the poem early in his career and took about three years to finish it. At the time the poem was published, its heroic couplet style was quite a new poetic form and Pope's work an ambitious attempt to identify and refine his own positions as a poet and critic. It was said to be a response to an ongoing debate on the question of whether poetry should be natural, or written according to predetermined artificial rules inherited from the classical past.The "essay" begins with a discu.... Discover the Alexander Pope popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Alexander Pope books.

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  • Boy Scouts Handbook synopsis, comments

    Boy Scouts Handbook

    The Boy Scouts of America

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  • Alexander Pope synopsis, comments

    Alexander Pope

    G.S. Fraser

    First published in 1978, Alexander Pope is an introduction to Pope’s life and work, which sets the poet solidly in his age and relates the liveliness and variety of his poetry to t...

  • The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1 synopsis, comments

    The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1

    Alexander Pope

    Alexander Pope was born in Lombard Street, London, on the 21st of May 1688the year of the Revolution. His father was a linenmerchant, in thriving circumstances, and said to have no...

  • In the Name of the Family synopsis, comments

    In the Name of the Family

    Sarah Dunant

    Before the Corleones, before the Lannisters, there were the Borgias. One of history’s notorious families comes to life in a captivating novel from the author of The Birth of Venus....

  • The Iliad synopsis, comments

    The Iliad

    Homer & Caroline Alexander

    With her virtuoso translation, classicist and bestselling author Caroline Alexander brings to life Homer’s timeless epic of the Trojan WarComposed around 730 B.C., Homer’s Iliad re...

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    The Borgias

    Jean Plaidy

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    Charles Bukowski

    Barry Miles

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    Alexander Pope

    Leslie Stephen

    Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744) was an 18thcentury English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. Famous for his use of the heroic co...

  • Collected Poems of Alexander Pope synopsis, comments

    Collected Poems of Alexander Pope

    Alexander Pope & Neil Azevedo

    Alexander Pope (16881744) is widely considered to be the best poet of the Augustan age, and perhaps English verse’s best satirist ever. Pope was mostly selftaught having been denie...

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    The Artist and the Eternal City

    Loyd Grossman

    This brilliant vignette of seventeenthcentury Rome, its Baroque architecture, and its relationship to the Catholic Church brings to life the friendship between a gen...

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    Till I End My Song

    Harold Bloom

    “A colossus among critics. . . . His enthusiasm for literature is a joyous intoxicant.” New York TimesIn this charming anthology, esteemed literary critic Harold Bloom collects the...

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    Alexander Pope

    Leslie Stephen

    With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world. Who are w...

  • Alexander Pope synopsis, comments

    Alexander Pope

    Leslie Stephen

    Alexander Pope was an 18thcentury English poet.  Pope became famous quickly for his use of the heroic couplet and aside from Shakespeare he is the most frequently quoted write...

  • Pastorals. By Alexander Pope synopsis, comments

    Pastorals. By Alexander Pope

    Alexander Pope

    Pastorals. By Alexander Pope, Alexander Pope. Pastorals. By Alexander Pope Pope, Alexander, 16881744. 14p. ; 24⁰. Manchester : printed by G. Nicholson and Co. Sold by T. Knott; and...

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    History of the Inquisition of Spain

    Henry Charles Lea

    "A History of the Inquisition of Spain" in 4 volumes is one of the bestknown works by the American historian Henry Charles Lea. The Spanish Inquisition (officially known as...

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    The Handbook for Scout Masters

    The Boy Scouts of America

    Now Available Again, the Original 1914 Rules, Regulations, and Lessons Necessary for Boy Scout Leaders First published in 1914, the Handbook for Scout Masters was the foremost comp...

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    Alexander Pope

    Netta Murray Goldsmith

    This title was first published in 2002: Making use of the growing body of research in recent years on the nature of creativity, Netta Goldsmith here presents a new view of the famo...

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    The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

    Laurence Sterne, Joan New & Melvyn New

    'Ld! said my mother, what is all this story about? A COCK and a BULL, said Yorick And one of the best of its kind, I ever heard'Laurence Sterne's great masterpiece of bawdy humou...

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    The Borgia Confessions

    Alyssa Palombo

    'Under Palombo’s skillful hand, the entangled world of the Borgias comes vividly to life, exposing the dark facets of class structure and the allconsuming greed that comes with amb...

  • Works of Alexander Pope synopsis, comments

    Works of Alexander Pope

    Alexander Pope

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    1494

    Stephen R. Bown

    "This is a starry love story, a tale of seething jealousies and subterfuge, a political imbroglio, and religious cruelties. It sounds like Shakespeare and it could have very well b...

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    Blood and Beauty

    Sarah Dunant

    NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWSThe New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Italian Renaissance novelsThe Birth of Venus, In the Company of the ...

  • The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 2 synopsis, comments

    The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 2

    Alexander Pope

    Few poets during their lifetime have been at once so much admired and so much abused as Pope. Some writers, destined to oblivion in afterages, have been loaded with laurels in thei...

  • The Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1 synopsis, comments

    The Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1

    Alexander Pope

    This is a poetry book. About this time, Pope commenced preparations for the great work of translating Homer; and subscriptionpapers, accordingly, were issued. Dean Swift was now in...

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    Machiavelli

    Miles J. Unger

    He is the most infamous and influential political writer of all time. His name has become synonymous with cynical scheming and the selfish pursuit of power. Niccolò Machiavelli, Fl...

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    Alexander Pope

    John Barnard

    The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling stu...

  • Alexander Pope synopsis, comments

    Alexander Pope

    Leslie Stephen

    Alexander Pope Leslie Stephen, English author, critic and mountaineer (18321904) This ebook presents «Alexander Pope», from Leslie Stephen. A dynamic table of contents enables to j...

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    Heroes

    Paul Johnson

    A galaxy of legendary figures from the annals of Western historyIn this enlightening and entertaining work, Paul Johnson, the bestselling author of Intellectuals and Creators, appr...

  • Letters of the late Alexander Pope, Esq. To a lady. Never before published synopsis, comments

    Letters of the late Alexander Pope, Esq. To a lady. Never before published

    Alexander Pope

    Letters of the late Alexander Pope, Esq. To a lady. Never before published, Alexander Pope. Letters of the late Alexander Pope, Esq. To a lady. Never before published Pope, Alexand...

  • The Collected Works of Alexander Pope synopsis, comments

    The Collected Works of Alexander Pope

    Alexander Pope, John Arbuthnot, John Gay & Homer

    This comprehensive eBook presents the complete works or all the significant works the Œuvre of this famous and brilliant writer in one ebook easytoread and easytonavigate: An E...

  • Alexander Pope synopsis, comments

    Alexander Pope

    Alexander Pope & Robin Sowerby

    Alexander Pope's technical polish and intellectual poise appeal to the subtlest audience. This selection includes The Rape of the Lock, Eloisa to Abelard, and extracts from The Dun...

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    Alexander Pope

    Paul Baines

    So many questions surround the key figures in the English literary canon, but most books focus on one aspect of an author's life or work, or limit themselves to a single critical a...