Alexander Pope was one of the great voices of his or any age. He exemplified the term, “Man of Letters,” taking a rigorous approach to composing narrative poetry, satirizing the social mores of his age, translating classical poetry into his contemporary idiom, and drafting letters (and cultivating famous friendships) with the great literary lights of his day.

Pope was born near Windsor Forest, some twenty miles outside London, south of the River Thames, and it are these environs that serve as the springboard for one of his early great poems. It is likely that Pope suffered from a form of Tuberculosis which stunted his height and made his everyday life fraught with intense physical discomfort; for all that, he never lost a sense of humor, or the tenacity that fires the belly of all enduring writers. Among his best known poems today are The Dunciad, The Rape of the Lock, and his translation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, among the first-ever to be rendered into English.