LARGE PAPER COPY

Letters of Mr Alexander Pope, and several of his Friends.

London: Printed by J. Wright for J. Knapton … L. Gilliver … J. Brindley … and R. Dodsley … 1737.

Folio, pp. [36], [9]-196, 189-307, [1], with a half-title (‘The Works … in Prose’); engraved vignette to title-page (a medallion portrait of Pope by John Richardson), title printed in red and black; engraved head- and tail-pieces by William Kent; a fine, crisp copy on large paper in contemporary panelled calf.

£1500

Approximately:
US $1942€1786

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Letters of Mr Alexander Pope, and several of his Friends.

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First folio edition, large paper issue, preceded by a subscribers’ edition in quarto, of the first ‘official’ version of Pope’s letters.

Pope had desired for some time to see his correspondence printed but was reluctant to be seen publicly to organise such a project. In 1729 a group of letters had appeared and in the Posthumous Works of William Wycherley but most copies were quickly withdrawn by Pope; in 1735 he contrived their ‘unauthorised’ appearance, by sending the sheets to his old rival Edmund Curll, under the pseudonym ‘P. T.’. Curll, not knowing their true source, published them to great success, with several variants and piracies appearing thereafter.

Pope now could justify an ‘official’ publication to counter the surreptitious one, and the result was the Letters of 1737, intended as the first volume of a larger publishing project (hence the half-title ‘The Works’). The text was based on that of 1735 but a number of letters were added, others significantly polished, a new preface and contents list added, and the whole graced with a carefully-chosen vignette portrait of a youthful Pope.

Griffiths 456.

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