Alexander Pope: 1688-1744

Born in London, but family relocates to Binfield, forests of Windsor to comply with anti-Catholic statute.

Teaches himself Greek and Latin.

At 12, develops TB of the spine.

Early literary mentors include William Wycherley and William Congreve.

Alexander Pope

Later in Pope's life, Sir Joshua Reynolds described him as "about four feet six high; very humpbacked and deformed."

Maynard Mack has written that Pope was "afflicted with constant headaches, sometimes so severe that he could barely see the paper he wrote upon, frequent violent pain at bone and muscle joints...shortness of breath, increasing inability to ride horseback or even walk for exercise...."

Alexander Pope: Major Works

1711 An Essay on Criticism. 1712 The Rape of the Lock. 1713 Windsor Forest 1715 Homer's Iliad 1717 Poems on Several Occasions 1725 The Works of Shakespeare

Collated and Corrected . 1726 Homer's Odyssey 1728 The Dunciad: An Heroic Poem

(1743). 1733-34 An Essay on Man . 1735 An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot 1738 Imitations of Horace.

Grant Wood: American Gothic, 1930