ALS from the young Alexander Pope to his mentor Antony Englefield, dated August 8th 1707.

£25,000 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Not published by George Sherburn in his 1956 edition of Pope’s correspondence but later published in The Review of English Studies , New Series Vol. 9, No. 36 (November 1957), pp. 388-406; and by Sherburn in “Pope on the Threshold of His Career,” Harvard Library Bulletin , Vol. XIII, No. 1 (Winter 1959), pp. 29-46. A remarkably early and entertaining letter written as the young Alexander Pope was on the cusp of great fame. A lively letter written by Pope at the age of nineteen to Antony Englefield, a close friend and mentor; the recipient was some fifty years older than Pope, and lived at Whiteknights, on the outskirts of Reading, about five miles from the village of Binfield in Windsor Forest, where Pope grew up. Only two earlier autograph letters of Pope are known to survive , sent in April and July of the same year to another elderly friend and neighbour Sir William Trumbull; these relatively short notes are in the British Library. This letter was written by Pope at a time of high excitement, as he was then on his first extended trip away from home, to visit the poet, critic, and politician William Walsh (1662-1708) at his home in Abberley, about ten miles northwest of Worcester. Pope had gone to see Walsh specifically for advice about the composition of his “Pastorals;” these poems did not appear in print until a year after Walsh’s death, but surviving manuscripts show that Walsh made a notable contribution to the transformation of Pope into a “correct” poet, as he was la

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