Although today he’s considered one of the most important writers in English literature, opinions of Alexander Pope during his own time were very much divided. Pope (1688-1744) was a poet, translator, and satirist best known today, perhaps, for The Rape of the Lock, first published in 1712. He burst onto the English literary scene in 1709 with the publication of his Pastorals, which he followed up with An Essay on Criticism in 1711. By the time the first edition of The Dunciad appeared in 1728, Pope had become a contentious figure. His translations of Homer’s Iliad (1715-1720) and Odyssey (1725-1726) were hugely successful, but his editions of Shakespeare’s works (1725) were met with critical derision, much of it fueled by jealousy and by the commercial vogue for scathing criticism that was prevalent in the era. As his renown grew, Pope—who was already something of an outcast from traditional London society—found himself more and more often the subject of verbal attacks from other writers, and his works more frequently plagiarized by unscrupulous publishers.

Pope was born in London to a family of Catholics in 1688, the first year of the Glorious Revolution, which ultimately deposed James II, England’s last Catholic monarch.