The Rape of the Lock

This edition reprints the text of Pope's classic poem — both the five-canto 1714 version and the facsimile of the original 1712 version — together with a broad selection of documents that have been carefully chosen to put the poem into the social and historical context of Pope's eighteenth century. Including correspondence, poems, broadsides, reviews, and parodies, the documents focus special attention on Pope's life and career as well as on eighteenth-century poetic traditions and innovations, social habits and assumptions, historical events, and political implications.