Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was born into a Catholic family at the end of the 17th century, only a few short months after the forced abdication of Britain’s last Catholic monarch, James II. Pope felt the full effects of anti-Catholic sentiment during his early life, as the Test Acts (a series of laws designed to inhibit the prosperity of Catholic families at the time) prevented his family from living within 10 miles of London and prevented him from attending a university. Instead, Pope was largely self-taught, teaching himself French, Italian, Latin, and Greek, and even reading Homer at an early age. By 1709, he had published a number of his poems entitled Pastorals in Jacob Tonson’s popular collection Poetic Miscellanies, and by 1711 he had published “An Essay on Criticism.” This essay was particularly well received and gained him a number of admirers with considerable literary clout, including Richard Steele and Joseph Addison, with whom he began collaborating on The Spectator, a landmark daily publication. Following the success of “The Rape of the Lock,” in 1717 he published a folio of his work with two new additions, “Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady” and “Eloisa to Abelard.” Pope’s greatest satirical work, The Dunciad, first appeared in 1728 and the final version was printed in 1743. This mock-heroic mercilessly pokes fun at his contemporaries, and although it was originally published anonymously, Pope’s distinctive wit meant it the authorship was no secret, reaffirming his position as one of the foremost satirists of his day. It is also worth noting that aside from his own literary creations, Pope was greatly interested in translation and editing. From 1715 to 1720, Pope published various editions of his translation of Homer’s Iliad and published his translation of the Odyssey in 1726, shortly after the 1725 publication of his edition of the complete works of Shakespeare, which made a number of significant editorial changes and was heavily critiqued. Towards the end of his life, however, Pope’s literary output began to decline, and he wrote little after 1738. Having always been a sickly child, Pope’s final years were marked by a severe decline in health, and he died shortly after his 56th birthday.