Unlike authors such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Horace Walpole, or Lord Chesterfield, Pope is not known chiefly for his correspondence. We should do better to compare him with Keats or Byron, whose letters occupy a central place in their oeuvre alongside the poetry that first made them famous. There are well over 2,000 items in the standard edition (Sherburn’s in 1956), roughly three quarters of them written by Pope, occasionally in collaboration with friends, most often John Gay. This is together with about 500 addressed to him. Subsequently, more than fifty have come to light, as well as many better texts than were available to Sherburn. Pope’s assiduity in keeping up exchanges led him to jot down his replies on any surface to hand, most notoriously the messages scribbled on the…
2205 words
Citation: Rogers, Pat. "Alexander Pope: Correspondence". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 November 2023 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=40994, accessed 21 November 2024.]
