Author: Pope, Alexander
Biography:
POPE, Alexander (1688-1744: ODNB)
Pope is a prior author who owes his place in this bibliography to the substantial edition in two volumes of previously unpublished or corrected versions of poems and letters by Pope and his circle, Additions to the Works, published in 1776, and to those later collections which include either some of those belatedly published works or well-known earlier poems by Pope in the same volume with post-1770 authors. Pope was born in London on 21 May 1688, the son of a linen merchant, Alexander Pope (1646-1717) and his second wife Edith Turner (1643-1733). The family was Catholic and Pope’s career was directly affected by fluctuations in the political regime, especially after the Hanoverian Succession in 1714. He suffered for most of his life from a disease that crippled him and caused chronic pain as well as periodic fevers and other ailments: it is now believed to have been tuberculosis of the bones traceable to milk from his wetnurse in infancy. He had his early education from Catholic schools and tutors but after 1700, when the family moved to Windsor Forest, he was largely self-educated. A period spent in London to learn French and Italian brought him into contact with his first literary circles. Much of his work circulated in manuscript before it reached publication, but from the public appearance of his Pastorals in 1709 his talent was widely recognized and he was courted by both whigs and tories to write for their interests. Major works include the Essay in Criticism (1711), The Rape of the Lock (1714), Windsor-Forest (1714), The Dunciad (1728-43), the Essay on Man (1734-5), Imitations of Horace (1733-8), and two ambitious large-scale works, his translations of Homer (1715-26) and his edition of Shakespeare (1725). The Popes moved to Chiswick in 1715 and Pope later built himself a little Palladian villa at Twickenham, where he died on 30 May 1744; he was buried next to his parents in Twickenham church on 5 June. He left an estate valued at £5000-£6000, the principal legatee being another Catholic, his old friend Martha Blount (1690-1762). He left his copyrights to William Warburton who brought out a corrected and annotated posthumous edition of his works in nine volumes but gave the tricky task of the first official biography to Owen Ruffhead, who duly published it in 1769. (ODNB 29 Mar. 2024; findmypast.com 30 Mar. 2024)
Other Names:
- Pope