from my classmate :)

1. Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
• Alexander Pope was considered as one
of the finest poets and satirists (people
who use wit or sarcasm to point out
and devalue sin or silliness) of the
Augustan period and one of the major
influences on English literature in this
time and after.

2. Biography of Alexander Pope
• He was born in Lombard Street, London on May 21, 1688 . His
father was a linen-draper of Plough Court, Lombard Street.
Despite his family’s Catholic faith which barred him from
attending university, Pope learned Greek and Latin under the
tutelage of a local priest and later, at Catholic school.
• In 1700, Pope’s family moved to Binfield in Winsor Forest, where
Pope undertook a regime of rigorous self-education once his formal
education was complete. He read, studied, and translated,
sometimes teaching himself languages through the act of
translation.

3. • At twelve, Pope composed his earliest extant work, Ode to
Solitude; the same year saw the onset of the debilitating bone
deformity that would plague Pope until the end of his life.
Originally attributed to the severity of his studies, the illness is
now commonly accepted as Pott’s disease, a form of tuberculosis
affecting the spine that stunted his growth
• Pope’s height never exceeded four and a half feet—and rendered
him hunchbacked, asthmatic, frail, and prone to violent
headaches. His physical appearance would make him an easy
target for his many literary enemies in later years, who would
refer to the poet as a “hump-backed toad.”

4. • After the onset of his illness, Pope resolved to go to London to
learn French and Italian. In the circles of fashionable London
society, Pope made a number of literary acquaintances including
William Wycherley and William Congreve, both noted comic
dramatists. It seems likely that Pope’s manuscript of
the Pastorals circulated among these powerful literary figures,
shaping Pope’s career.
• Pope’s output slowed after 1738 as his health, never good, began
to fail.

5. • Since his death, Pope has been in a constant state of
reevaluation. His high artifice, strict prosody, and, at times,
the sheer cruelty of his satire were an object of derision for
the Romantic poets of the nineteenth century, and it was not
until the 1930s that his reputation was revived. Pope is now
considered the dominant poetic voice of his century, a model
of prosodic elegance, biting wit, and an enduring, demanding
moral force.

6. Ode to Solitude
Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.
Whose heards with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

7. Blest! who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day.
Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix'd; sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lye.