Alexander Pope: A Life

by Maynard Mack

Winner of the Christian Gauss Award of Phi Beta Kappa and the Robert Kirsch Award of the Los Angeles Times.
The noted Yale scholar and critic offers a complete biography of the great eighteenth-century poet, elucidating his skills as a doubly disadvantaged individual and his triumphs as a poet and spokesman for his times.

Genres: Biography, History, 18th Century

978 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[John]

A superb old-school biography. By "old school" I mean works of literary biography published before Richard Holmes completed "Shelly: The Pursuit," which, to my mind, established new standards of success for the genre.

Beautifully written, encyclopedic in scope. Yet there is an emphasis on context and externals that seems to distract Mack from the "proper" focus of such a narrative: Alexander Pope. Of course, Mack teases us unmercifully with glimpses of Pope's inner life - but Mack's discretion is annoying.

But that was then. Fortunately the age of Edwardian propriety and respectability in literary biography is over - one hopes.

[Bursfeld · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have given it five stars because if you want to know everything about Alexander Pope, Maynard Mack was THE scholar to ask. But it was a puzzling experience in some ways. I know very little about Pope's poetry beyond the few things well-read people tend to know ("fools rush in where angels fear to tread" etc.) so I cannot comment on the poetry too much. What I wanted to learn about was Pope's era in England and Mack provides that beautifully. For a book I didn't entirely understand in some areas, I am glad to know about Mr. Pope and his amazing gift for friendship and how deeply Pope was loved by many of his contemporaries. Pope's contemporaries, friends and foes alike, are described fully and thoughtfully. The poisonous political situation with Mr. Walpole now makes more sense to me than it ever has before. The famous Shakespearean actor David Garrick gushed about how thrilled, absolutely thrilled he was to meet Mr. Pope! So even for a long read it was entirely worth the effort. I feel that I too would have loved Alexander Pope if I had met him.

[Sharon Healy-Yang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mack's erudite biography is thorough. He shows a deep understanding of the times and culture surrounding Pope, as well as the poet's place in that environment. Mack's work is thoroughly researched, while his analysis of Pope's poetry is incisive and illuminating. I came away from this biography with a deeper understanding of and appreciation for Alexander Pope. I could have done with a few less eight-or-more-line sentences that tended to cram too many points together, thereby lessening their clarity.

[Jack Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, at well over 800 pages long, it does pretty much constitute everything you ever wanted to know about Alexander Pope but were afraid to ask. A good deal of it is occupied with readings of the poems, which is useful. That does highlight how little is known about various crucial aspects of his life, however. It's hard to imagine it ever being superseded, to be honest.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was really a masterful treatment of Pope and his works. At times it was a bit laborious as the author continuously quoted lines of poems interspersed with his own comments and quotations from other poets and literature. In that way it sometimes seemed a bit pretentious as if the author was trying to show off his own knowledge of literature through the volume. None the less, it was a very good read and for a lover of Pope, it is a necessary read.