Alexander Pope born 1688-1744

About:

Alexander Pope was born in the City of London in 1688 to Roman Catholic parents in exactly the year when it became a disaster to be Catholic. The accession to the throne of William III ensured a tightening of the already draconian laws limiting Catholic participation in English life. This combined with a childhood disease (a tubercular infection of the bone known as Potts’ Disease), which slowly turned the brilliant young boy into a bowed hunchback of no more than four foot six inches, was to set pope on a fairly confrontational footing with life.

His educated and previously wealthy parents ensured a first rate education for the young Pope and he finished this off himself with a thorough reading of the classics, the legacy of which would be felt throughout his writing life. He started writing at a precociously young age, claiming to have written the Ode to Solitude at the age of twelve, and completing his first successful series of poems The Pastorals, by the age of twenty.

Pope became involved with the politics of the day early in his life – taking the classical lead, he was a firm believer in the role of the poet in everyday society, and although his earlier works were not as strident as the later publications Pope was a writer who meant the reader, and the society to which he belonged to be affected by what he read. His aggressive satires earned him many enemies, according to his sister he would not take a walk unless accompanied by his great dane Bounce and a pair of loaded pistols.

In 1713 Pope began a revolution in poetic circles by securing a subscription based publishing deal for his translation of Homer’s Iliad which would make him the first English poet to live off his poetry alone. The negatively pedantic academic reception of this highly popular translation and its sequels The Odyssey and the works of Shakespeare, lead Pope to his most influential and most confrontational work The Dunciad, in which he mercilessly parodied the academic establishment , and in its final incarnation the Laureate Colley Cibber.

In spite of the number of his enemies, Alexander Pope died surrounded by his friends in 1744 and is buried in the nave of the Catholic church in Twickenham nearest to his beloved home