Alexander Pope

Pope, Alexander (1688–1744), the greatest English poet and satirist of the Augustan Age. He was 4 ft 6 in (1.4 m) tall and partly crippled by tuberculosis. He first set out his literary ideals in his Essay on Criticism (1711), written in rhymed (heroic) couplets. His best-known works are the mock epic The Rape of the Lock (1712), his translations of the Iliad (1720) and the Odyssey (1726), The Dunciad (1728, 1743), a satirical attack on literary critics, and his essays on moral philosophy, An Essay on Man (1733–34) and Moral Essays (1731–35).