Introduction by Clive T. Probyn, Professor of English, Monash University.

          "The proper study of mankind is man". Thus aptly did Alexander Pope sum up his own art, for man in society was both his subject and his audience.

          Yet, peculiarly disadvantaged from the start by his Roman Catholic background and by physical disability, although Pope wrote from within the social scene he was himself never fully part of it, and his fearless attacks on contemporary society aroused a violent hostility which marked the whole of his career. In his poetry as in his life, Pope’s values were defined in conflict and through transformations: for him poetry was made from the interaction of the past and present, the private and the public, and his career was influenced both by inherited modes of expression and by his own eighteenth-century present.

          Clive Probyn’s introduction discusses Pope’s life and art, and considers the nature of his genius, both as a product of its own time and for succeeding generations, stressing the view that the poet has a central place in society, whether as celebrant or opponent.