1812 The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq. in Verse and Prose With a Selection of Explanatory Notes and Account of his Life by Dr. Johnson

Description

Leather Binding, Scarce

First edition thus. Seemingly the first edition to contain solely the notes of Samuel Johnson and The Life of the Author in this form. In eight volumes complete. With an engraved portrait of Pope to frontispiece to volume one. 'In this edition, it has been attempted to give (what the Public has long demanded) a correct text of Pope's works, in which the reader's attention is not divided, or his feelings interrupted, by the discordance of critical disputes and fanciful opinions, such Notes only having been preserved as are necessary to explain ambiguities in the text, or afford some information respecting the characters. The notes of Pope himself, being of this description, are generally retained... To the Life, written by Dr. Johnson, several particulars have been added from subsequent biographers.' London, December 1811. Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744) was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. Famous for his use of the heroic couplet, he is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson. Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer.