Publisher Description

Pope's letters are fascinating documents, apart from his importance as a poet. Highly revealing of his remarkable characterDSambitious, dangerous, trimming, ridiculous, intelligent, generous yet antagonisticDSthey also comprise a body of writing of extraordinary interest for an understanding of his times: its personalities, its plots, its tragedies and exiles, its loves, its scandals, the movement of its religious, political, and philosophical ideas, its sense ofpoetry, and its notions of poetic craft and genre. Moreover, Pope published a collection of his own letters: a selective and highly edited collection, in which (having retrieved the originals from somerecipients) he revised their texts and on occasion claimed they had been written to other people. This came to light with the nineteenth-century discovery of transcripts of the original letters, made for Pope's correspondent Lord Caryll. Other letters preserved in the British Library's Homer MS are clearly ones the poet would not have chosen to keep, since he used their backs for drafts of his Iliad translation. George Sherburn's scholarly five-volume CollectedCorrespondence (Oxford, 1956) is the necessary basis for any new edition. The collection presented here is in the first place a balanced and varied selection from Sherburn. Since 1956, however, many new lettershave been discovered, and this volume includes most of them. Many are among Pope's best, though they have till now been scattered in learned journals. This selection supplies an introduction, a commentary on each letter identifying allusions and quotations (with translations where necessary), and thematic and biographical indexes.

Author Biography

Valerie Rumbold is Senior Lecturer in English at the Universityof Birmingham. She has published a range of articles on Pope and on eighteenth-century women writers. Her book "Women's Place in Pope's World" (1989) was awarded the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize by the BritishAcademy. She also edited the "Longman Annotated Texts" edition of "Alexander Pope: The Dunciad in Four Books "(1999).

Table of Contents

IntroductionNote on the TextLETTERS1704-141715-241725-341735-44Biographical IndexAnalytical Index

Review

`The best thing to come from this collection is a sense of Pope less as a combative satirist than as a private and religious individual, whose love of "romantic" (his word) landscapes infused much of what he wrote'David Nokes, Times Literary Supplement`the first collection of Pope's letters that one can read simply for pleasure and that teachers might plausibly assign to undergraduate students ... highly recommended.'D.L. Patey, Choice,March 2001,Vol38, No7.`scholarly and entertaining collection of [Pope's] letters.'David McLaurin, The Tablet, 16/12/00.`this book is a wonderful introduction to the greatest genius of the Augstan Age ... Professor Erskine-Hill has done us, and Pope, a great service. this book deserves a place in every household.'David McLaurin, The Tablet, 16/12/00.

Long Description

Pope's letters are fascinating documents, apart from his importance as a poet. Highly revealing of his remarkable characterDSambitious, dangerous, trimming, ridiculous, intelligent, generous yet antagonisticDSthey also comprise a body of writing of extraordinary interest for an understanding of his times: its personalities, its plots, its tragedies and exiles, its loves, its scandals, the movement of its religious, political, and philosophical ideas, its sense of
poetry, and its notions of poetic craft and genre. Moreover, Pope published a collection of his own letters: a selective and highly edited collection, in which (having retrieved the originals from some recipients) he revised their texts and on occasion claimed they had been written to other people. This
came to light with the nineteenth-century discovery of transcripts of the original letters, made for Pope's correspondent Lord Caryll. Other letters preserved in the British Library's Homer MS are clearly ones the poet would not have chosen to keep, since he used their backs for drafts of his Iliad translation. George Sherburn's scholarly five-volume Collected Correspondence (Oxford, 1956) is the necessary basis for any new edition. The collection presented here is in the
first place a balanced and varied selection from Sherburn. Since 1956, however, many new letters have been discovered, and this volume includes most of them. Many are among Pope's best, though they have till now been scattered in learned journals. This selection supplies an
introduction, a commentary on each letter identifying allusions and quotations (with translations where necessary), and thematic and biographical indexes.

Review Text

`The best thing to come from this collection is a sense of Pope less as a combative satirist than as a private and religious individual, whose love of "romantic" (his word) landscapes infused much of what he wrote'
David Nokes, Times Literary Supplement
`the first collection of Pope's letters that one can read simply for pleasure and that teachers might plausibly assign to undergraduate students ... highly recommended.'
D.L. Patey, Choice,March 2001,Vol38, No7.
`scholarly and entertaining collection of [Pope's] letters.'
David McLaurin, The Tablet, 16/12/00.
`this book is a wonderful introduction to the greatest genius of the Augstan Age ... Professor Erskine-Hill has done us, and Pope, a great service. this book deserves a place in every household.'
David McLaurin, The Tablet, 16/12/00.

Review Quote

'this book is a wonderful introduction to the greatest genius of theAugstan Age ... Professor Erskine-Hill has done us, and Pope, a great service.this book deserves a place in every household.'David McLaurin, The Tablet, 16/12/00.

Feature

A generous selection from the letters of one of the greatest poets and most interesting letter-writers in the English language
As well as writing brilliant literary letters on subjects as diverse as love, poetry, and politics, Pope edited much of his own correspondence for publication - often with substantial rewriting, and sometimes even with different recipients' names: the edition exposes the extent of this public refashioning of himself, and supplies fascinating insights into the poet's character
The only edition of Pope's correspondence currently available
Edited by a notable scholar of Pope and his age
Based on the great Shirburn edition, but with a new and illuminating commentary, biographical information on all individuals mentioned, and an analytical index.

Details