Alexander Pope: A Life

by Maynard Mack

Overview

Winner of the Christian Gauss Award of Phi Beta Kappa and the Robert Kirsch Award of the Los Angeles Times.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393305296
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	06/17/1988
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	988
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Maynard Mack is Sterling Professor of English Emeritus at Yale University.

Editorial Reviews

"Long-awaited. . . . Mr. Mack has now laid before us in impressive and authoritative fashion the whole life of Pope, an invaluable gift of scholarship and judgment. . . . Reads like a good Russian novel."

Sewanne Review - John M. Aden

"Brings to life in richly imagined historical context the controversial figure of Alexander Pope, the most important poet of his time. . . . Brilliant analysis."

Chicago Tribune - Patricia Meyer Spacks

"A first-rate biography. . . . Doubles as a masterly work of literary and cultural history. . . . Beautifully written."

New Statesman

"[A] crowning achievement. . . . The rewards of reading [Pope] are immense—and so are the rewards of reading about him in this excellent biography."

New York Times - John Gross

Disadvantaged socially as a hunchback and cripple, politically as a Roman Catholic, Pope (16881744) rose to become the greatest poet of his age, in Byron's estimation ``the great moral poet of all times.'' In this first full biography of him since 1900, Pope scholar Mack blends sensitive criticism of his poetry, from the early pastorals and Homer translations to such masterpieces as The Rape of the Lock and the Dunciad, with copious and intriguing detail regarding the private life. In the process he is able to show that Pope's often exaggerated disagreeable qualitieshis vengefulness, deviousness and capacity to hatewere more than offset by his generosity, moral courage and unswerving, sometimes risky, loyalty to a circle of friends that included Swift and John Gay. Pope held a mirror to his age, catching its follies and foibles, grandeur and viciousness with unrivaled precision; and Mack brings us both Pope and the age in a biography as entertaining as it is masterly. Illustrations. January 27

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly