By Alexander Pope

The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems:

The Rape of the Lock was one of Alexander Pope’s most popular poems. It was a satirical attempt to reconcile the real life warring of two Catholic families whose feud had started with the supposed nicking of a lock of hair from the undeniably beautiful head of Arabella Fermor by her admirer Lord Petre. The mock-heroic tenor of the poem was supposed to diffuse the situation, but rather like most of Pope’s poetry it served to fan the flames of the feelings of those involved and to bring most of the country in on the story to comment.

It is a beautiful bit of pseudo-classical verse, in keeping with Pope’s thorough knowledge and love of the classical scholars such as Homer, whose Iliad he would go on to translate to his immense financial profit. But it is also a seriously witty piece of satire, and it is still funny. The truth of the fact that a small wrong can be writ huge in an affair of the heart is as true today as it was in the highly strung years of the early part of the eighteenth century.

The poems included in this collection are mostly those of the young Pope, the Ode to Solitude indeed is claimed to have been written by Pope when he was twelve. But they are not the mere scribblings of a child. Pope was remarkably precocious and these poems are the product of a highly trained mind with a blissfully vicious turn of phrase. These are the writings of an extraordinary talent before he got too embroiled in the fury of his feelings about the current state of English society and its academics.