Volume 33, Number 4 · March 13, 1986
Putting Pope in His Place
By Robert M. Adams
Alexander Pope: A Life
by Maynard Mack
Norton, 975 pp., $22.50
Pope and Horace: Studies in Imitation
by Frank Stack
Cambridge University Press, 316 pp., $39.50
In almost two years, on May 21, 1988, we will arrive at the three hundredth anniversary of Alexander Pope's birth. Major public manifestations are not to be expected. Pope is a classic of our literature, but he is of that numerous group that one could call shelf-classics. His books are in the research libraries, his poetry is analyzed in graduate seminars; college students as they run the annual obstacle course from Beowulf to Thomas Hardy make brief acquaintance with The Rape of the Lock. But a spontaneous, widespread, popular readership Pope has not had for a matter of centuries now, and does not have today. It is hard to imagine the extent to which in his own day he dominated the literary scene.
Review, 4042 words
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