Alexander Pope (1688-1744), Poet

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The son of a linen-draper, Pope was first noticed by Jacob Tonson who published his Pastorals in 1709. With The Rape of the Lock 1712, and his translations of Homer, Pope became the most formidable literary figure of his day, with a large circle of friends and enemies. Primarily a satirical poet and of unsurpassed metrical skill, he wrote 'what oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed'. A friend of Swift and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and famous in the history of landscape gardening for the grounds of his villa at Twickenham, he was revered as one of the great personalities of the age.