Alexander Pope

First published with revisions as an Oxford World's Classics paperback: 2006.

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 the strange combination of chronic invalidism and a sociable disposition which marked his life. G. S. Fraser argues that Pope is a more varied figure than his reputation as a great satirist indicates and that he is in some ways more a survivor from the Restoration than a precursor of middle-class morality. Special attention is paid to the poems in the first Collected Works of 1717, which displays both Pope’s gaiety and his sense of colour and beauty. The dignity of his translation of Homer and the thoughtfulness and piety of An Essay on Man are also emphasised. His satirical genius, which found its greatest expression during the later years of declining health, is not ignored but set in perspective. Many readers of this persuasively argued study will be surprised to discover in it a gayer, more warm-hearted and more likeable Pope than they had, perhaps, imagined. Students of English literature will find this book immensely refreshing.

The noted Yale scholar and critic offers a complete biography of the great eighteenth-century poet, elucidating his skills as a doubly disadvantaged individual and his triumphs as a poet and spokesman for his times

Explores Alexander Pope's early career as a literary author, and provides a transformative account of the eighteenth century poet.

Alexander Pope was the greatest poet of his age and the dominant influence on eighteenth-century British poetry. His large oeuvre, written over a thirty-year period, encompasses satires, odes and political verse and reflects the sexual, moral and cultural issues of the world around him, often in brilliant lines and phrases which have become part of our language today. This is the first overview to analyse the full range of Pope's work and to set it in its historical and cultural context. Specially commissioned essays by leading scholars explore all of Pope's major works, including the sexual politics of The Rape of the Lock, the philosophical enquiries of An Essay on Man and the Moral Essays, and the mock-heroic of The Dunciad in its various forms. This volume will be indispensable not only for students and scholars of Pope's work, but also for all those interested in the Augustan age.