Rewards of Fame, and its Hazards

Abstract

When Pope began the Iliad translation, he was a rising young poet from a country background, with some famous friends and protectors; when he ended it, he was the country’s unofficial laureate, rich, independent, and in a position (as he liked to say) to ‘fling off Lords by dozens’. The move away from Binfield in Windsor Forest began in 1716, when Pope and his parents transferred to Chiswick, partly, apparently, to avoid a new tax-burden on their property as Catholics, but also to make it easier for him to conduct his literary affairs in London. It was here that his father died in 1717, and Pope began his long career as his ageing mother’s chief support, which lasted with great tenderness on both sides until her death, aged 90 (1733).