Alexander Pope

Introduction
Early works
Homer and The Dunciad
Life at Twickenham
Legacy

Quotes References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics

Images

Alexander Pope, portrait by Thomas Hudson; in the National Portrait Gallery, London

At a Glance

Alexander Pope summary

Quizzes

Illustration of "The Lamb" from "Songs of Innocence" by William Blake, 1879. poem; poetry

A Study of Poetry

4:043 Dickinson, Emily: A Life of Letters, This is my letter to the world/That never wrote to me; I'll tell you how the Sun Rose/A Ribbon at a time; Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul

Famous Poets and Poetic Form

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) only confirmed photograph of Emily Dickinson. 1978 scan of a Daguerreotype. ca. 1847; in the Amherst College Archives. American poet. See Notes:

Poetry: First Lines

Related Questions

How did Alexander Pope adapt Homer’s epics for 18th-century English readers?
How did Alexander Pope adapt Horace’s satires to 18th-century England?
How did Alexander Pope receive most of his education?
How did Alexander Pope turn the story of a stolen lock of hair into a mock epic?
How did Alexander Pope use heroic couplets differently in satire and in emotional poems?
How did Alexander Pope’s Roman Catholic faith affect his life and education?
How did Alexander Pope’s physical condition influence his focus on reading and writing?
How did An Essay on Criticism help Alexander Pope gain new literary friends?
How did Colley Cibber become the central target of the final version of The Dunciad?
How did “Eloisa to Abelard” portray the conflict between religious devotion and romantic passion?
How did The Dunciad criticize pedantry and bad writing?
How did The Rape of the Lock compare a private social quarrel to the Trojan War?
How did the Scriblerus Club influence Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels?
How does Alexander Pope use heroic couplets in The Rape of the Lock?
How does Alexander Pope use sound to match meaning in An Essay on Criticism?
How does An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot defend Alexander Pope’s role as a satirist?
How does An Essay on Criticism explain the importance of nature in art?
How does An Essay on Man describe the hierarchy of living things?
How many epistles are included in An Essay on Man?
How much money did Alexander Pope earn from translating Homer?
What did Alexander Pope write about architecture and landscape design in his epistle to the Earl of Burlington?
What does The Rape of the Lock satirize about upper-class society?
What health problems affected Alexander Pope throughout his life?
What ideas about Queen Anne’s rule appear in “Windsor-Forest”?
What is a heroic couplet and why did Alexander Pope use it so often?
What kinds of people are satirized in An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot?
What larger work was An Essay on Man meant to introduce?
What poetic form did Alexander Pope use in An Essay on Criticism?
What real event inspired The Rape of the Lock?
What rules for critics does An Essay on Criticism present?
What subjects are discussed in the four epistles of An Essay on Man?
What was the Scriblerus Club created to satirize?
When and where did Alexander Pope die?
When and where was Alexander Pope born?
When did Alexander Pope begin translating Homer’s Iliad?
When did The Dunciad expand from three books to four books?
When was Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad completed?
When was An Essay on Criticism published?
When were Alexander Pope’s “Pastorals” first published?
Where did Alexander Pope spend most of his later life?
Which books of the Odyssey did William Broome translate for Alexander Pope’s project?
Which early poems did Alexander Pope say he wrote when he was 12 years old?
Which famous English sayings come from An Essay on Criticism?
Which languages did Alexander Pope teach himself to read?
Which publisher included Alexander Pope’s “Pastorals” in Poetical Miscellanies?
Which unfinished poems and projects did Alexander Pope leave at his death?
Who helped Alexander Pope translate Homer’s Odyssey?
Who is Belinda in The Rape of the Lock?
Who was Martinus Scriblerus?
Who were the main members of the Scriblerus Club?
Why could Alexander Pope not attend an English university?
Why did Alexander Pope use mock footnotes and appendices in The Dunciad Variorum?
Why did Alexander Pope write The Rape of the Lock?
Why does An Essay on Man place humans above animals and plants?
Why is Alexander Pope known for writing memorable epigrams?
Why were Alexander Pope’s poems widely read and translated across Europe?
Who was Patrick Stewart?
What role did Patrick Stewart play in Star Trek: The Next Generation?
What role did Patrick Stewart play in the X-Men films?

Literature Novels & Short Stories Novelists L-Z

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External Websites

Poetry Archive - Alexander Pope
Academy of American Poets - Biography of Alexander Pope
University of Wisconsin-Madison - Center for the Study of the American Constitution - The FoundersÂ’ Poet: Alexander Pope
The Victorian Web - Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
BBC Sounds - In Our Time - Pope
The Twickenham Museum - Alexander Pope
Poetry Foundation - Biography of Alexander Pope

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Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

Alexander Pope - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Alexander Pope

English author

Written by

John Everett Butt

Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, University of Edinburgh, 1959–65. Author of Pope's Poetical Manuscripts; coeditor of Letters of Alexander Pope and others.

John Everett Butt

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Britannica Editors

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

Britannica Editors

Last updated

Oct. 17, 2026 •History

Alexander Pope (born May 21, 1688, London, England—died May 30, 1744, Twickenham, near London) was a poet and satirist of the English Augustan period, best known for his poems An Essay on Criticism (1711), The Rape of the Lock (1712–14), The Dunciad (1728), and An Essay on Man (1733–34). He is one of the most epigrammatic of all English authors. Pope’s father, a wholesale linen merchant, retired from business in the year of his son’s...

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