Alexander Pope
1st Edition
Published on 3. November 2011
Book
Paperback/Softback
226 pages
978-1-108-03457-9 (ISBN)
Description
Blending history with literary criticism and general reflections with hard facts, this biography from 1880, which places the man in the context of his greatest works, remains a useful starting-point for the study of Pope, not least because it gives an overview of earlier biographies. Sir Leslie Stephen (1832-1904) came from a distinguished family of politicians, jurists and writers, and was the father of Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. His literary career began with writing about his great passion, the Alps, and he became a noted author and critic, and the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. He was a friend of John Morley (1838-1923), the general editor of English Men of Letters, who commissioned him to write three biographies for the first series, on Swift, Pope and Johnson. Stephen's Sketches from Cambridge, published anonymously in 1865, is also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
325 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-108-03457-9 (9781108034579)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Sir Leslie Stephen KCB FBA (November 28, 1832 - February 22, 1904) was an English novelist, critic, historian, biographer, climber, and early humanist campaigner. He was also Virginia Woolf's and Vanessa Bell's father. Sir Leslie Stephen was the son of Sir James Stephen and (Lady) Jane Catherine (née Venn) Stephen, and was born at 14 (later renumbered 42) Hyde Park Gate, Kensington in London. His father was a prominent abolitionist and Colonial Undersecretary of State. His siblings included James Fitzjames Stephen (1829-1894) and Caroline Emelia Stephen (1834-1909), the fourth of five children. His ancestors belonged to the Clapham Sect, an early-nineteenth-century group of primarily evangelical Christian social reformers. He saw a lot of the Macaulays, James Spedding, Sir Henry Taylor, and Nassau Senior at his father's residence. Leslie Stephen attended Eton College, King's College London, and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he earned his B.A. (20th wrangler) in 1854 and his M.A. in 1857. In 1854, he was elected a fellow of Trinity Hall, and in 1856, he was appointed a junior tutor. He was ordained in 1859, but his study of philosophy, along with the religious disputes surrounding Charles Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species (1859), caused him to lose his faith in 1862, and he resigned from his positions at Cambridge and relocated to London in 1864.
Content
Prefatory note; 1. Early years; 2. First period of Pope's literary career; 3. Pope's Homer; 4. Pope at Twickenham; 5. The war with the Dunces; 6. Correspondence; 7. The Essay on Man; 8. Epistles and satires; 9. The end.