Alexander Pope has often been termed the first true professional poet in English, whose dealings with the book trade helped to produce the literary marketplace of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this representative selection of Pope's most important work, the texts are presented in chronological sequence so that the Moral Essays and Imitations of Horace are restored to their original position in his career.
This edition represents the single most comprehensive anthology of Pope's works. The Duncaid, The Rape of the Lock, and Imitations of Horace are presented in full, together with a characteristic sample of Pope's prose, including satires, pamphlets, and periodical writing. This edition also includes a further reading list, an invaluable biographical index as well as indexes of titles, first lines, and correspondences.
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Considered the preeminent verse satirist in English, Alexander Pope (1688-1744) brought wide learning, devastating wit and masterly technique to his poems. Models of clarity and control, they exemplified the classical poetics of the Augustan age. This volume contains a rich selection of Pope's work, including such well-known poems as the title selection — a philosophical meditation on the nature of the universe and man's place in it — and "The Rape of the Lock," a mock-epic of rare charm and skill. Also included are "Ode on Solitude," "The Dying Christian to His Soul," "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady," "An Essay on Criticism," "Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog," "Epistle [IV] to Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington: Of the Use of Riches," "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot; or, Prologue to the Satires" and more. Taken together, these poems offer an excellent sampling of Pope's imaginative genius and the felicitous blending of word, idea and image that earned him a place among the leading lights of 18th-century literature....