Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope: poet, translator, and satirist

Alexander Pope was born in London on 21 May 1688 O.S., the year of the Glorious Revolution, and died on 30 May 1744. He was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era, closely associated with Augustan literature. In the early 18th century, he became one of the most prominent English poets of his age, known for verse that could be polished, severe, comic, and sharply intelligent.

Pope’s family background shaped the conditions of his life from the beginning. His father, also Alexander Pope, was a successful linen merchant in the Strand, London, and his mother, Edith Turner, came from York. Both parents were Catholics. The Test Acts, English penal laws that upheld the established Church of England, barred Catholics from teaching, attending university, voting, and holding public office under severe penalties. Pope learned to read from his aunt, attended Twyford School around 1698, and also went to two Roman Catholic schools in London, which were illegal but tolerated in some places.

In 1700, anti-Catholic feeling and a statute against “Papists” living within 10 miles of London or Westminster led the family to move to Popeswood, a small estate at Binfield in Berkshire, near Windsor Forest. His formal education ended there, but his reading widened. Pope educated himself through classical writers such as Horace, Juvenal, Homer, and Virgil, and English writers including Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and John Dryden. He also studied French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poetry. After several years, he began meeting figures from London literary society, among them William Congreve, Samuel Garth, and William Trumbull.

Illness also marked Pope’s life. From the age of 12 he suffered from Pott disease, a form of tuberculosis affecting the spine, which deformed his body, stunted his growth, and left him with a severe hunchback. He also endured respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes, and abdominal pain, and grew to only 4 feet 6 inches. Already socially limited as a Catholic, he was further set apart by poor health. Yet he formed many friendships, including with John Caryll, William Wycherley, William Walsh, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Martha Blount, with whom he remained close until his death.

Works and lasting force of the words

Pope’s Pastorals appeared in May 1709 in Jacob Tonson’s Poetical Miscellanies, bringing him instant fame. An Essay on Criticism, published anonymously on 15 May 1711, was equally well received. He followed with works including The Rape of the Lock, Windsor Forest, and The Dunciad. Around 1711 he joined Jonathan Swift, Thomas Parnell, and John Arbuthnot in the satirical Scriblerus Club, whose aim was to mock ignorance and pedantry through the fictional scholar Martinus Scriblerus. He also knew Whig writers Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, contributing to Addison’s Cato and writing for The Guardian and The Spectator.

Pope’s translations of Homer brought both literary stature and financial independence. His translation of the Iliad, begun around this period, was published from 1715 to 1720 and was based in particular on Anne Dacier’s French translation. The money allowed him in 1719 to move to a villa at Twickenham, where he made a grotto and gardens. His lines remain widely quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, and some have passed into common speech, including “damning with faint praise” and “to err is human; to forgive, divine.” That survival suits Pope: he wrote with discipline, wit, and a keen eye for human folly.