A POPE CHRONOLOGY Macmillan Author Chronologies

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

A POPE CHRONOLOGY Macmillan Author Chronologies A POPE CHRONOLOGY Macmillan Author Chronologies General Editor: Norman Page, Professor of Modern English Literature, University of Nottingham Reginald Berry A POPE CHRONOLOGY Edward Bishop A VIRGINIA WOOLF CHRONOLOGY Timothy Hands A GEORGE ELIOT CHRONOLOGY Norman Page A BYRON CHRONOLOGY A DICKENS CHRONOLOGY F. B. Pinion A WORDSWORTH CHRONOLOGY R. C. Terry A TROLLOPE CHRONOLOGY Further titles in preparation Series Standing Order If you would like to receive future titles in this series as they are published, you can make use of our standing order facility. To place a standing order please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address and the name of the series. Please state with which title you wish to begin your standing order. (If you live outside the UK we may not have the rights for your area, in which case we will forward your order to the publisher concerned.) Standing Order Service, Macmillan Distribution Ud, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG212XS, England. A Pope Chronology REGINALD BERRY Senior Lecturer in English University of Canterbury, New Zealand M MACMILLAN PRESS ©Reginald John Berry 1988 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1988 978-0-333-39907-1 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1988 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset by Wessex Typesetters (Division of The Eastern Press Ltd) Frome, Somerset British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Berry, Reginald A Pope chronology.-(Macmillan author chronologies) 1. Pope, Alexander-Chronology I. Title 821'.5 PR3633 ISBN 978-1-349-08279-7 ISBN 978-1-349-08277-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-08277-3 For Carolynne, Anthea and Aidan Contents General Editor's Preface ix Introduction xi List of Abbreviations xiii A POPE CHRONOLOGY 1 Principal Persons Mentioned 186 Principal Places Mentioned 193 Bibliography 196 Index 197 vii General Editor's Preface Most biographies are ill adapted to serve as works of reference - not surprisingly so, since the biographer is likely to regard his function as the devising of a continuous and readable narrative, with excursions into interpretation and speculation, rather than a bald recital of facts. There are times, however, when anyone reading for business or pleasure needs to check a point quickly or to obtain a rapid overview of part of an author's life or career; and at such moments turning over the pages of a biography can be a time-consuming and frustrating occupation. The present series of volumes aims at providing a means whereby the chronological facts of an author's life and career, rather than needing to be prised out of the narrative in which they are (if they appear at all) securely embedded, can be seen at a glance. Moreover, whereas biographies are often, and quite understandably, vague over matters of fact (since it makes for tediousness to be forever enumerating details of dates and places), a chronology can be precise whenever it is possible to be precise. Thanks to the survival, sometimes in very large quantities, of letters, diaries, notebooks and other documents, as well as to thoroughly researched biographies and bibliographies, this material now exists in abundance for many major authors. In the case of, for example, Dickens, we can often ascertain what he was doing in each month and week, and almost on each day, of his prodigiously active working life; and the student of, say, David Copperfield is likely to find it fascinating as well as useful to know just when Dickens was at work on each part of that novel, what other literary enterprises he was engaged in at the same time, whom he was meeting, what places he was visiting, and what were the relevant circumstances of his personal and professional life. Such a chronology is not, of course, a substitute for a biography; but its arrangement, in combination with its index, makes it a much more convenient tool for this kind of purpose; and it may be acceptable as a form of 'alternative' biography, with its own distinctive advantages as well as its obvious limitations. Since information relating to an author's early years is usually scanty and chronologically imprecise, the opening section of some volumes in this series groups together the years of childhood and ix X A Pope Chronology adolescence. Thereafter each year, and usually each month, is dealt with separately. Information not readily assignable to a specific month or day is given as a general note under the relevant year or month. The first entry for each month carries an indication of the day of the week, so that when necessary this can be readily calculated for other dates. Each volume also contains a bibliography of the principal sources of information. In the chronology itself, the sources of many of the more specific items, including quotations, are identified, in order that the reader who wishes to do so may consult the original contexts. NoRMAN PAGE Introduction In the Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, the poet famously condenses his life into the phrase 'this long disease'. Seen at length in a chronology such as this, the life of Alexander Pope is dominated rather by his dedication to friends and friendship, to the creation of a stable domestic situation for himself, and, centrally, to the discipline of the poet's profession. The evidence of these dominant aspects is found in Pope's correspondence and in the complex publication details of his own works and those of his contemporaries. The chronology delineates Pope's continuing respect for family values and his pursuit of the quiet country life at his Twickenham villa, with his own landscaped garden. But Pope also spent much time away, visiting with well-to-do friends at their rural estates and commuting to London to deal with the business side of his literary career. Like many writers he spoke infrequently of his works in progress. But he left a detailed record of his intensive participation in the printing and publishing of his works. In two ways represented here, Pope was also fully engaged in a community of writers. On the friendly side, he always sought out the fellowship of men of genius. In particular, because his early participation in the Scriblerus Club (1713-14) so determined his later career, I have included in this chronology selected information about the parallel careers of Gay, Arbuthnot and Swift. On the hostile side, Pope's literary and financial successes (and his often prickly personality) attracted a jealous and vicious crew of detractors, as evidenced by the recurrent appearance in these pages of references to pamphlet and newspaper attacks on the poet, his works, and his character. More detailed information about these attacks can be found in Guerinot' s Pamphlet Attacks on Alexander Pope and Rogers' Major Satires of Alexander Pope. Full bibliographic descriptions of Pope's works are to be found in Griffith's Bibliography. Where works have gone into multiple editions I have not tried to include the dates of all of these, except occasionally to show the popularity of a particular piece, as with The Rape of the Lock or The Dunciad. In some cases exact publication dates are not available, either because they are unknown or because sources give contradictory dates; some dates, therefore, may be only approximate. In the eighteenth- xi xii A Pope Chronology century book world, the bookseller performed the modem-day function of publisher; here I have used the two terms interchangeably. A major resource for this chronology has been Pope's Correspondence, edited by George Sherburn. Unless otherwise noted, quotations from the letters are from this edition and can be located there according to the date of the entry. Because Pope edited his own correspondence for publication, and the originals for a proportion of the letters do not now exist, not all the information so derived may be accurate. Pope was also notoriously lax or inexact about dating his letters properly, as the extant letters show. And in certain cases, as well, Pope consciously fabricated letters for his own editions (see, for example, 20 July 1705 and 26 July 1734). The general matter of dating requires a brief explanation. Until 1752, and therefore through the whole of Pope's life, England followed the Julian or Old Style Calendar, whereas most of Europe had adopted the Gregorian or New Style Calendar almost two centuries earlier. The Julian Calendar was eleven days behind the Gregorian, and it started the year on 25 March. In this chronology all dates are Old Style, except that the year is taken to begin on 1 January. The assembly of a chronology implies not only a compiling of dates and events but also an understanding of the life extrapolated upon them. In that regard, I am indebted to the several narratives of Pope's career by Maynard Mack, especially Alexander Pope: A Life (1985). More personally, I owe this work to the inspiration provided by Peter Seary and Patricia Briickmann, who in a far­ away place first taught me how to read Pope. Here, in another place far away, I have been helped by Helen Deverson, Kate Trevella, Gareth Cordery, Ronys Davey (Waiwetu), Stuart Foster (Matai), and also by Carolynne Berry.
Recommended publications
  • And Voltaire's
    A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF POPE’S “ESSAY ON MAN” AND VOLTAIRE’S “DISCOURS EN VERS SUR L’HONME” A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF ATLANTA UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTERS OF ARTS BY ANNIE BERNICE WIMBUSH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES ATLANTA, GEORGIA NAY 1966 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page PREFACE . a a . • • • . iii. Chapter I. THENENANDTHEIRWORKS. a• • • • • . a aa 1 The Life of Alexander Pope The Life of Voltaire II. ABRIEFRESUNEOFTHETWOPOENS . aa • . • •. a a 20 Pope’s “Essay on Man” Voltaire’s “Discours En Vers Sur L’Hoimne” III. A COMPARISON OF THE TWO POEMS . a • • 30 B IBLIOGRAPHY a a a a a a a a a a a • a a a • a a a a a a a 45 ii PREFACE In the annals of posterity few men of letters are lauded with the universal renown and fame as are the two literary giants, Voltaire and Pope. Such creative impetus and “esprit” that was uniquely theirs in sures their place among the truly great. The histories and literatures of France and England show these twQ men as strongly influential on philosophical thinking. Their very characters and temperaments even helped to shape and transform man’s outlook on life in the eighteenth century and onward.. On the one hand, there is Voltaire, the French poet, philosopher, historian and publicist whose ideas became the ideas of hundreds of others and whose art remains with us today as monuments of a great mind. On the other there is Pope, the English satirical poet and philosopher, endowed with a hypersensitive soul, who concerned himself with the ordinary aspects of literary and social life, and these aspects he portrayed in his unique and excellent verse, Both men were deeply involved in the controversial issues of the time.
    [Show full text]
  • Pope's Meadow Leaflet
    Get involved Useful information Conservation Volunteering Directions If you’re interested in a practical, hands-on way Located between Bracknell and Binfield, the main of conserving parks and countryside sites such entrance is off St Marks Road, north of it’s junction as Pope’s Meadow, there are a host of voluntary with B3408 London Road. organisations with whom you can get involved with and help make a difference. Access on foot Discover ... More information can be found on our website. There are two pedestrian entrances located off St Marks Road, with two further entrances off Events Murrell Hill Lane. A wide range of events and activities take place at Pope’s Meadow The site is also on the local bus route, for more Pope’s Meadow throughout the year. These include information contact traveline. wildlife talks, countryside walks and educational events for schools, youth groups and children such Facilities as pond-dipping and bug hunting. Parking Toddlers More information on our website. Play area Access Surfaced Path Bike Picnic parking table Contacts Bracknell Forest Council Parks & Countryside Service Tel: 01344 354441 Pond dipping Email: [email protected] Website: www.bracknell-forest.gov.uk/ parksandcountryside Orienteering Orienteering is an exciting challenge for children and Travelline Tel: 0871 200 22 33 adults to find points in the landscape using only a Email: www.traveline.info map and a compass. It can be enjoyed either as a competitive sport or a leisurely walk around the site. A permanent course has been mapped out Copies of this leaflet may be obtained in Pope’s Meadow in association with Berkshire in large print, Braille, on audio tape or Volunteers and The Big Lottery Fund.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Pope, Curll, and the Intermediality of Eighteenth-Century
    Pope, Curll, and the Intermediality of Eighteenth-Century Character One wonders whether Alexander Pope did quite foresee the avalanche of print he would set off when he was planning the publication of his familiar letters. He must have known that Edmund Curll and other booksellers would quickly move to reprint if they could at all get away with it, but the sheer scale of operations – and the reader demand that such a scale implied – may have surprised even him.1 The publication of his letters came at an already busy time for Pope, who, in 1733-7 alone, published 24 new titles as well as a vast number of further editions and reprints of these and older titles. The letters, however, drove the publication of Pope‟s texts and of Popeiana to a level of frenzy that had only been reached once before, in the aftermath of the publication of the Dunciad (1728). By the time the dust was settling, Pope had stage-managed three different versions of his correspondence in at least 17 editions between 1735 and 1742, while notorious London book seller Edmund Curll had produced at least a further 11 editions and had added engravings of Pope and his correspondents to all of his volumes. It is therefore probably safe to say that the publication of Letters of Mr. Pope and Several Eminent Persons on 19 May 1735 marked the beginning of a media event that would attract the attention of British readers, writers, and booksellers for the next seven years.2 Though the focus of many excellent studies, the broad outlines of what I call the “Letters media event” bear summarizing again if for no other reason than that its timeline and cast are extremely convoluted.
    [Show full text]
  • Pope and Slavery
    Proceedings of the British Academy, 91,27753 Pope and Slavery HOWARD ERSKINE-HILL I am certainly desirous to run from my Country, if you’ll run from yours, and study Popery and Slavery abroad a while, to reconcile ourselves to the Church & State we may find at home on our return. (Pope to the Earl of Marchmont, 22 June 1740 Correspondence, IV. 250) 1 IN 1790 THE POET Alexander Radishchev, called ‘The First Russian Radical’, printed his Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, criticising the condition of the serfs under Catherine the Great, and dedicating it without permission to his friend, the poet A. M. Kutuzov. Kutuzov, alarmed with reason at this dedication, recounts how on an earlier occasion he had remonstrated with Radishchev, quoting to him in English Pope’s translation of Homer’s lfiad,Bk. I, the lines of Calchas to Achilles on the perils of telling unwelcome truths to kings: For I must speak what Wisdom would conceal, And Truths invidious [to] the Great reveal. Bold is the task! when Subjects grown too wise Instruct a Monarch where his Error lies; For tho’ we deem the short-liv’d fury past Be sure, the Mighty will revenge at last. (I. 101-6)’ 0 The British Academy 1998. ‘In my reference to Radishchev I am indebted to Professor Monica Partridge and to Professor A. G. Cross. The lines quoted from Pope’s Iliad translation by A. M. Kutuzov are I. 101-6; T. E. VIII. 92. The allusion is briefly discussed in David Marshal Lang, The First Russian Radical 1749-1802 (London, 1959), pp.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    INTRODUCTION n four verse epistles of modest length published anonymously between February 1733 and January 1734, Alexander Pope revealed Iyet another aspect of his vast poetic ambition. Having already pub- lished a substantial collected poems in 1717, translated Homer, ed- ited Shakespeare, and trumpeted the corruption of contemporary literary and public culture in his Dunciad, Pope writes a philosophi- cal poem. He begins his poem with (nearly) the same avowed pur- pose as Milton in Paradise Lost, already in Pope’s time the great Brit- ish religious and national epic: to vindicate (Milton says justify) the ways of God to man. But Pope does not use biblical history—the elevation of the son, the fall of angels, the creation of the world, the fall of the first people—to shape his vindication. Instead he produces a description of man in the abstract in four epistles that he says are a map to the more practically oriented and historically specific poems he was planning, poems on subjects such as the use of riches and taste. Forgoing narrative is one challenge Pope sets himself; another is the ambition of the Essay on Man to synthesize the great diversity of thinking in the allied disciplines with something to say about where humans find themselves in the universe (anthropology, cos- mology, metaphysics, moral psychology, physics, theology—just to begin a list). Pope formulates concise statements on central ethical topics, moderating between antagonistic schools of thought. Fur- ther, he writes a poem that passes for orthodoxy, even piety, in the terms of eighteenth- century British state religion, while not speci- fying the Christian revelation in the poem.
    [Show full text]
  • Life and Works of Alexander Pope Dr Atal Kumar Department of English
    Life and Works of Alexander Pope Dr Atal Kumar Department of English Gaya College, Gaya Alexander Pope, the greatest poet and verse satirist of the Augustan Period, was born to Alexander Pope and Edith Turner on May 21, 1688, in London where his Roman Catholic father was a prosperous linen merchant. He had a Catholic upbringing. Ironically, young Pope was born at a time when rights of the Catholics to teaching, education, voting and holding public office was banned due to the enactment to the Test Acts which uplifted the status of the Church of England. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 his family moved out of London and settled about 1700 at Binfield in Windsor Forest. He had little formal schooling, largely educating himself through extensive reading. Additionally, he equipped himself with studying various languages. It was with the know-how of the language that he read works of various poets as such English, French, Italian, Latin and Greek. Sir William Trumbull, a retired statesman of literary interests who lived nearby, did much to encourage the young poet. So did the dramatist and poet William Wycherley and the poet-critic William Walsh, with whom Pope became acquainted when he was about 17 and whose advice to aim at "correctness" contributed to the flawless texture and concentrated brilliance of Pope's verse. A sweet-tempered child with a fresh, plump face, Pope contracted a tubercular infection in his later childhood and never grew taller than 4 feet 6 inches. He suffered curvature of the spine and constant headaches. His features, however, were striking, and the young Joshua Reynolds noticed in his "sharp, keen countenance … something grand, like Cicero's." His physical appearance, frequently ridiculed by his enemies, undoubtedly gave an edge to Pope's satire; but he was always warmhearted and generous in his affection for his many friends.
    [Show full text]
  • Alexander Pope‘S Biography
    Alexander Pope‘s Biography • 1688-1744 (Painting of Pope, c. 1727) Chronology • 1700 (age 12): living with retired father on small estate in Windsor Forest. Much reading and writing (perhaps especially because of health difficulties—bone disease left him short in physical stature). • 1706-11 (18-23 yrs old): a man of literary society at London coffeehouses and taverns. Friends (sort of) with Whig literary figures: Congreve, Steele, Addison, etc. Chronology Continued • 1711 (age 23): wrote Essay on Criticism • 1712/14 (age 24/26): Rape of the Lock • 1712 (age 24): befriends Jonathan Swift • 1713 (age 25): begins translation of Homer‘s Iliad. (later translates Odyssey) Note on Religious Context • Pope is famous for earning his living as a writer: ―Because he could not, as a Roman Catholic, attend university, vote, or hold public office, he was excluded from the sort of patronage that was bestowed by statesmen on many writers during the reign of [Queen] Anne‖ (NA 2665). • Pope‘s bookishness as a youth and his gifts as a writer eventually paid off for him. Pope‘s Twickenham Estate • 1718 (age 30): Five-acre villa with grotto Chronology Continued • 1728: Begins epic satire The Dunciad. • Pope was not shy about mocking others. – “A little learning is a dangerous thing”: – this famous quote from his Essay on Criticism exemplifies his attitude in The Dunciad. – “fools rush in, where angels fear to tread” is another quote of his with a similar point. • He was more of a ―cultured‖ elitist than an egalitarian… Literary, Social, & Economic Context • Pope ―disliked and feared . tendencies of his time—the vulgarization of taste and the arts consequent on the rapid growth of the reading public and the development of journalism, magazines, and other popular and cheap publications, which spread scandal, sensationalism, and political partisanship—in short the new commercial spirit of the nation that was corrupting not only the arts but, as Pope saw it, the national life itself‖ (NA 2666).
    [Show full text]
  • Alexander Pope, Windsor-Forest
    Windsor-Forest TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE GEORGE LORD LANSDOWN Non injussa cano: Te nostræ, Vare, Myricæ Te Nemus omne canet; nec Phoebo gratior ulla est Quam sibi quæ Vari præscripsit pagina nomen. VIRGIL 1 Thy forests, Windsor! and thy green retreats, Based on text in The Works of Alexander Pope (1736). Pope’s own notes are enclosed in quotation marks and have his name appended to them in square brackets. Other notes are supplied (or adapted) from various modern editions and studies, with attributions as follows, but without surrounding quotation marks: Brown = Laura Brown. Alexander Pope. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985. Butt = The Poems of Alexander Pope. Ed. John Butt. New Haven: Yale UP, 1963. Fairer & Gerrard = Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology. Ed. David Fairer and Christine Gerrard. 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. Price = The Selected Poetry of Pope. Ed. Martin Price. New York: New American Library, 1970. Rogers = The Oxford Authors: Alexander Pope. Ed. Pat Rogers. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993. Rogers 2004 = Pat Rogers. The Symbolic Design of “Windsor-Forest”. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2004. Sherman = The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Gen. ed. David Damrosch. Vol. 1C: The Restoration and the 18th Century. Ed. Stuart Sherman. 2nd edn. New York: Longman, 2003. Williams = Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope. Ed. Aubrey Williams. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969. Headnote “This Poem was written at two different times: the first part of it which relates to the country, in the year 1704, at the same time with the Pastorals: the latter part was not added till the year 1713, in which it was publish'd” [Pope].
    [Show full text]
  • Echoes of Leibniz in Pope's Essay On
    Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee Volume 8 Issue 1 Article 3 January 2017 Echoes of Leibniz in Pope’s Essay on Man: Criticism and Cultural Shift in the Eighteenth Century Sierra Billingslea [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/pursuit Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons, History of Philosophy Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, and the Other Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Billingslea, Sierra (2017) "Echoes of Leibniz in Pope’s Essay on Man: Criticism and Cultural Shift in the Eighteenth Century," Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee: Vol. 8 : Iss. 1 , Article 3. Available at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/pursuit/vol8/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Volunteer, Open Access, Library Journals (VOL Journals), published in partnership with The University of Tennessee (UT) University Libraries. This article has been accepted for inclusion in Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee by an authorized editor. For more information, please visit https://trace.tennessee.edu/pursuit. Pursuit: The Journal of Undergraduate Research at the University of Tennessee Volume 8, Issue 1 (2017) PURSUIT Echoes of Leibniz in Pope’s Essay on Man: Criticism and Cultural Shift in the Eighteenth Century SIERRA BILLINGSLEA Towson University, Towson, MD [email protected] Advisor: Dr. George Hahn This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
    [Show full text]
  • Alexander Pope
    Alexander Pope Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was the greatest poet of the eighteenth century, and one of the greatest of all the poets who have written in the English language. Poets and critics since Pope’s own day have recognized just how spectacularly talented he was as a crafter of verse, and how ambitious he was, how fully he willed himself into becoming a great poet. From his early twenties, when poems like An Essay on Criticism and The Rape of the Lock established him as the most vibrant and interesting young poet in London, Pope has been considered to be a great writer and the most representative poet of the entire literary period between the works of John Milton and the emergence of the movement called Romanticism at the end of the eighteenth century. But what, exactly, does it mean to say that Pope was great and significant? What is “greatness,” anyway? This is not an easy question to answer–what is “great” in one era or context may seem trite in another, and it’s fair to say that the kind of poetry that Pope, with its tightly-controlled heroic couplets, has not been in fashion with readers or critics for a couple of hundred years. And because of that fact, Pope and the poetry of this entire period is less accessible to us than it ought to be; modern readers read less poetry than did eighteenth-century readers and, even those who read poetry are simply not used to verse like this. The end result is that it is hard for us to see what contemporaries recognized in Pope, what they found so striking, and what caused them to admire his works.
    [Show full text]
  • English Literature Before 1800 John Spalding Gatton University of Kentucky
    The Kentucky Review Volume 4 Number 1 This issue is devoted to a catalog of an Article 10 exhibition from the W. Hugh Peal Collection in the University of Kentucky Libraries. 1982 Catalog of the Peal Exhibition: English Literature before 1800 John Spalding Gatton University of Kentucky Follow this and additional works at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kentucky-review Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits you. Recommended Citation Gatton, John Spalding (1982) "Catalog of the Peal Exhibition: English Literature before 1800," The Kentucky Review: Vol. 4 : No. 1 , Article 10. Available at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kentucky-review/vol4/iss1/10 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Kentucky Libraries at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Kentucky Review by an authorized editor of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. English Literature before 1800 te td of :1t of 98. JOHN FLETCHER. Monsieur Thomas: A Comedy. London: Thomas Harper, 1639. Although regularly coupled with Francis Beaumont, his collaborator for some five years on a number of dramas, John Fletcher (1579-1625) also worked with such playwrights as Massinger, Rowley, and Shakespeare, with whom he is said to have shared in the composition of Henry VIII, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and the lost Cardenio. Fletcher also enjoyed a career as sole author of no fewer than fifteen dramas, many of them performed at the Blackfriars private theatre.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Pope, Curll, and the Intermediality of Eighteenth-Century
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Ghent University Academic Bibliography Pope, Curll, and the Intermediality of Eighteenth-Century Character One wonders whether Alexander Pope did quite foresee the avalanche of print he would set off when he was planning the publication of his familiar letters. He must have known that Edmund Curll and other booksellers would quickly move to reprint if they could at all get away with it, but the sheer scale of operations – and the reader demand that such a scale implied – may have surprised even him.1 The publication of his letters came at an already busy time for Pope, who, in 1733-7 alone, published 24 new titles as well as a vast number of further editions and reprints of these and older titles. The letters, however, drove the publication of Pope‟s texts and of Popeiana to a level of frenzy that had only been reached once before, in the aftermath of the publication of the Dunciad (1728). By the time the dust was settling, Pope had stage-managed three different versions of his correspondence in at least 17 editions between 1735 and 1742, while notorious London book seller Edmund Curll had produced at least a further 11 editions and had added engravings of Pope and his correspondents to all of his volumes. It is therefore probably safe to say that the publication of Letters of Mr. Pope and Several Eminent Persons on 19 May 1735 marked the beginning of a media event that would attract the attention of British readers, writers, and booksellers for the next seven years.2 Though the focus of many excellent studies, the broad outlines of what I call the “Letters media event” bear summarizing again if for no other reason than that its timeline and cast are extremely convoluted.
    [Show full text]