Alexander Pope
(1688–1744)

From the age of eight or nine, Alexander Pope knew that he wanted to become not just a poet but a great poet. Before he was 21, his Essay on Criticism had brought him to the attention of the leading literary figures of England. His satiric The Rape of the Lock, probably the best mock-epic poem in English, followed when he was 24. Despite his crippling childhood disease and persistent ill health, Pope triumphantly achieved his boyhood ambition. A brilliant satirist in verse, he gave his name (the age of Pope and Swift) to the literary era in which he lived and wrote.

Born into the Roman Catholic family of a London linen merchant, Pope had to struggle for position. After the expulsion of King James II, English Catholics could not legally vote, hold office, attend a university, or live within ten miles of London. To comply with rule of residency, his family moved to Binfield, near Windsor Forest, a rural setting where Pope spent his formative years writing poetry, studying the classics, and becoming broadly self-educated. Pope's physical problems were as severe as his religious ones. Deformed by tuberculosis of the spine, Pope stood only about four and a half feet tall–"the little Alexander whom the women laugh at," he said–and he suffered from nervousness and excruciating headaches throughout his life. In 1718, Pope moved to a five-acre estate at Twikenham, a village on the Thames, where he lived until his death.

Although Pope, "the Wasp of Twikenham," is more often remembered for his quarrels than for his cordiality, he became friends, and remained so for life, with members of the Tory group that included Jonathan Swift, John Gay, and Lord Bolingbroke. Pope instigated the formation of the Scriblerus Club, the purpose of which was to ridicule what its members regarded as "false taste in learning." The satiric emphasis of the club probably gave some impetus to the writing of Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Gay's Beggar's Opera, and Pope's The Dunciad, a burlesque heroic attack on Pope's literary enemies (most of whom are now forgotten).

In the 1730s, Pope's writing turned increasingly philosophical. He embarked on a massive work concerning morality and government, but completed only An Essay on Man and Moral Essays. Nevertheless, the entire body of his work is sufficient for critics today to accord him exceptionally high praise. The 20th-century poet Edith Sitwell calls Pope "perhaps the most flawless artist our race has yet produced."

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