Events
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Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).
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On May 2, Alexander Pope's career as a poet was launched with the publication of the anthology Poetical Miscellanies, The Sixth Part, edited by John Dryden. The publisher, Jacob Tonson, had solicited poems from Pope for the volume three years before; but publication was delayed and finally occurred three weeks before Pope's 21st birthday. Pope did not visit London at the time of publication, instead travelling there in June. Tonson was a hard bargainer, and paid Pope 13 guineas, for the young man's verses (about two pence per line). Pope would eventually become a hard bargainer himself in dealing with publishers, and although he became good friends with Tonson, he hardly ever wrote for him again. [2]
Pope's January and May; Or, The Merchant's Tale, a story about a young wife and the old husband she cuckolds (on pages 172–224) retold part of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (lines 817-720 of Pope's version): [2]
The poet also contributed a translation, The Episode of Sarpedon, Translated from the Twelfth and Sixteenth Books of Homer's Iliads (pages 301–323). John Denham, a poet of Dryden's generation, had written the best-known translation of Sarpedon's speech. According to the 20th-century critic and Pope biographer Maynard Mack, Pope's version shined in comparison, and when both versions were weighed together, "the coffee-house critics must have sensed [...] that a new star of some magnitude was rising in their sky". [2]
But the four Pastorals (pages 721–751) which concluded the volume, would have been the works on which Pope pinned most of his hopes for recognition, according to Mack, because the genre was what Virgil and various Renaissance critics deemed a proper first test for an aspiring poet. [2]
On May 17, Pope's friend, Wycherley, wrote to him that "all the best Judges [...] like your part of the Book so well, that the rest is lik'd the worse". Pope wrote back three days later, referring to Tonson's low payments but valuable publicizing (by including him in what the title page of the anthology called "Eminent hands"): [2]
Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
Alexander Pope was an English poet and satirist of the Augustan period and one of its greatest artistic exponents. Considered the foremost English poet of the early 18th century and a master of the heroic couplet, he is best known for satirical and discursive poetry, including The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad, and An Essay on Criticism, and for his translation of Homer. After Shakespeare, he is the second-most quoted author in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, some of his verses having entered common parlance.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1709.
Thomas Rymer was an English poet, critic, antiquary and historian. His lasting contribution was to compile and publish 16 volumes of the first edition of Foedera, a work in 20 volumes conveying agreements between The Crown of England and foreign powers since 1101. He held the office of English Historiographer Royal from 1692 to 1714. He is credited with coining the phrase "poetic justice" in The Tragedies of the Last Age Consider'd (1678).
Jacob Tonson, sometimes referred to as Jacob Tonson the Elder (1655–1736), was an eighteenth-century English bookseller and publisher.
Barnaby Bernard Lintot, English publisher, was born at Southwater, Sussex, and started business as a publisher in London about 1698. He was apprenticed to a bookseller in 1690 and was not officially freed of his contract until 1700, but he began selling books independently at the sign of the Cross Keys in St. Martin's Lane before that, and six plays appeared with his imprint in 1698.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Now the Assembly [the Kit-Kat Club] to adjourn prepar'd,
When Bibliopolo from behind appear'd
As well describ'd by th' old Satyrick Bard,
With leering Looks, Bull-fac'd, and Freckled fair,
With two left Legs; and Judas-colour'd [red] Hair,
With Frowzy Pores, that taint the ambient Air.
Sweating and Puffing for a-while he stood.
And then broke forth in this insulting Mood:Without my Stamp in vain your Poets write.
Those only purchase everliving Fame,That in my Miscellany plant their Name.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Now crowds to Founder Bocaj [Jacob Tonson] did resort
And for his Favour humbly made their Court.
The little Wits attended at his Gate
And Men of Title did his Levee wait;
For he, as Sovereign by Prerogative,
Old Members did exclude, and new receive.
He judg'd who most were for the Order fit,And Chapters held to make new Knights of Wit.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
A miscellany is a collection of various pieces of writing by different authors. Meaning a mixture, medley, or assortment, a miscellany can include pieces on many subjects and in a variety of different forms. In contrast to anthologies, whose aim is to give a selective and canonical view of literature, miscellanies were produced for the entertainment of a contemporary audience and so instead emphasise collectiveness and popularity. Laura Mandell and Rita Raley state:
This last distinction is quite often visible in the basic categorical differences between anthologies on the one hand, and all other types of collections on the other, for it is in the one that we read poems of excellence, the "best of English poetry," and it is in the other that we read poems of interest. Out of the differences between a principle of selection and a principle of collection, then, comes a difference in aesthetic value, which is precisely what is at issue in the debates over the "proper" material for inclusion into the canon.
