Downloads and Free Reading Options

LibriVox volunteers bring you 17 different recordings of <em>Solitude</em> by Alexander Pope. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of February 17th, 2008.

2Essay on Criticism

By Alexander Pope

An Essay on Criticism was the first major poem written by the English writer Alexander Pope (1688-1744). However, despite the title, the poem is not as much an original analysis as it is a compilation of Pope's various literary opinions. A reading of the poem makes it clear that he is addressing not so much the ingenuous reader as the intending writer. It is written in a type of rhyming verse called heroic couplets. (Summary from Wikipedia)

3Essay on Man

By Alexander Pope

Pope’s Essay on Man, a masterpiece of concise summary in itself, can fairly be summed up as an optimistic enquiry into mankind’s place in the vast Chain of Being.<br /><br /> Each of the poem’s four Epistles takes a different perspective, presenting Man in relation to the universe, as individual, in society and, finally, tracing his prospects for achieving the goal of happiness.<br /><br /> In choosing stately rhyming couplets to explore his theme, Pope sometimes becomes obscure through compressing his language overmuch. By and large, the work is a triumphant exercise in philosophical poetry, communicating its broad and commonplace truths in superbly balanced phrases which remind us that Pope, alas, is one of the most quoted but least read writers in English:<br /><br /> “Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always To be Blest.” (Summary by Martin Geeson)

4Epigram, engraved on the Collar of a Dog

By Alexander Pope

LibriVox volunteers bring you 15 recordings of Epigram by Alexander Pope. This was the Weekly Poetry project for August 8th, 2010.

The Rape of the Lock is a mock-heroic narrative poem written by Alexander Pope, first published anonymously in Lintot's Miscellany in May 1712 in two cantos (334 lines), but then revised, expanded and reissued under Pope's name on March 2, 1714, in a much-expanded 5-canto version (794 lines). The final form was available in 1717 with the addition of Clarissa's speech on good humour. The poem satirizes a petty squabble by comparing it to the epic world of the gods. It was based on an incident recounted by Pope's friend, John Caryll. Arabella Fermor and her suitor, Lord Petre, were both from aristocratic recusant Catholic families at a period in England when under such laws as the Test Act, all denominations except Anglicanism suffered legal restrictions and penalties (for example Petre could not take up his place in the House of Lords as a Catholic). Petre, lusting after Arabella, had cut off a lock of her hair without permission, and the consequent argument had created a breach between the two families. Pope, also a Catholic, wrote the poem at the request of friends in an attempt to "comically merge the two." He utilized the character Belinda to represent Arabella and introduced an entire system of "sylphs," or guardian spirits of virgins, a parodied version of the gods and goddesses of conventional epic. (Summary by Wikipedia)

Jessie Pope was an extremely patriotic English poet, writer and journalist, who remains best known for her patriotic motivational poems published during World War I. This poem is from Paper Pellets (1907), an anthology of humorous verse.(Summary from Wikipedia)

7Chronicles of Canada Volume 29 - The Day of Sir John Macdonald: A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion

By Sir Joseph Pope

A biography of Sir John A. Macdonald, the first Prime Minister of Canada. It was written by the man who served as Macdonald's private secretary from 1882 to 1891. - Summary by TriciaG

8Essay on Criticism (version 2)

By Alexander Pope

The title, <i>An Essay on Criticism</i> hardly indicates all that is included in the poem. It would have been impossible to give a full and exact idea of the art of poetical criticism without entering into the consideration of the art of poetry. Accordingly Pope has interwoven the precepts of both throughout the poem which might more properly have been styled an essay on the Art of Criticism and of Poetry. - Summary from the Gutenberg text

9Ode on Solitude

By Alexander Pope

LibriVox volunteers bring you 16 recordings of Ode on Solitude by Alexander Pope.<br> This was the Weekly Poetry project for September 12, 2021. <br> ------<br> Pope was a poet and satirist of the Augustan period and one of its greatest artistic exponents. Considered the foremost English poet of the early 18th century, after Shakespeare, he is the second-most quoted author in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, some of his verses having entered common parlance (e.g. "damning with faint praise"). (Wikipedia)

10In Imitation of E. of Dorset: Artemisia

By Alexander Pope

LibriVox volunteers bring you 13 recordings of In Imitation of E. of Dorset: Artemisia by Alexander Pope.<br> This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for June 25, 2023. <br> ------<br> Pope is not very flattering in his description of Lady Artemisia in this poem. <br> ------<br> (Summary by David Lawrence )

Jessie Pope published these poems during the early months of the First World War. They were very popular at the time and the author received many letters of support and gratitude including some from men serving at the Front. The poems illustrate the patriotic and optimistic (and perhaps rather naive) view of the war which many people had at the time. Later soldier poets like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, who had personal experience of the conflict, painted a grimmer picture. Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” was initially dedicated to Pope ("to a certain lady poetess") as a direct rebuttal of her view of the war. (Summary by Alan Mapstone)