Alexander Pope biography

 Alexander Pope  1688-1744


LIFE


Son of a Roman Catholic draper who made enough money to allow him to

retire with his family from London to Binfield, near Windsor in 1700,

Pope was educated at various Catholic schools until the age of twelve,

when severe illness (brought on by excessive study) left him deformed

and crippled; he resorted henceforth to self-education.


Introduced to London life by Wycherly (attracted by Pope's early poems),

and thanks to the success of Rape of the Lock (1712/1714), he soon

established himself at the centre of the literary world, moving to

Chiswick in 1716. His output - chiefly verse satires and translations

of the classics - brought him fame and fortune: enough of a fortune

to allow him to move in 1719 to a villa in Twickenham.


This frail little (4' 6") man now put more of his energies into original 

poetry and writing letters to friends (Swift, Arbuthnot, Gay and Martha

Blount), and securing his reputation as one of the most biting of

satirists and polished of poets of his day.


PRINCIPAL WORKS


Pastorals (in Tonson's Miscellany)  1708

The Essay on Criticism  1711

Windsor Forest  1713

Rape of the Lock  1714 (first version was 1712)

The Iliad  1715-1720   -  translation

The Works of Shakespear (ed)  1725

The Odyssey  1725-1726  -  translation

Dunciad Variorum  1729

Essay on Man  1733

Satires and Epistles of Horace  1733-1738

Epistle to Arbuthnot  1735

The Dunciad, in Four Books  1743


THE POEM


ODE ON SOLITUDE


Written about 1700; published in Miscellanies in 1727.

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