Editing Alexander Pope (section)

==Translations and editions==
===The ''Iliad''===
Pope had been fascinated by Homer since childhood. In 1713, he announced plans to publish a translation of the ''[[Iliad]]''. The work would be [[Publication by subscription|available by subscription]], with one volume appearing every year over six years. Pope secured a revolutionary deal with the publisher Bernard Lintot, which earned him 200 [[Guinea (British coin)|guineas]] (£210) a volume, a vast sum at the time.

His ''Iliad'' translation appeared between 1715 and 1720. It was acclaimed by [[Samuel Johnson]] as "a performance which no age or nation could hope to equal".  Conversely, the classical scholar [[Richard Bentley]] wrote: "It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Johnson |first=Samuel |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xWDDZ4QaA8gC |title=The Lives of the Most Eminent Poets with Critical Observations on their Works |publisher=Printed for J. Rivington & Sons, and 39 others |year=1791 |volume=IV |location=London |pages=193 |access-date=20 March 2023 |archive-date=7 April 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230407054850/https://books.google.com/books?id=xWDDZ4QaA8gC |url-status=live }}</ref>

===The ''Odyssey''===
{{Main|Odyssey (Alexander Pope translation)}}
[[File:OdysseyPopeTP1752.jpg|thumb|Frontispiece and title page of a 1752 edition of Pope's ''Odyssey''|alt=]]
Encouraged by the success of the ''Iliad'', Bernard Lintot published Pope's five-volume translation of Homer's ''Odyssey'' in 1725–1726.<ref>{{Cite book |author=Homer |name-list-style=amp |translator1=Alexander Pope |translator2=William Broome |translator3=Elijah Fenton |title=The Odyssey of Homer |edition=1st |date=1725–1726 |location=London |publisher=Bernard Lintot}}</ref> For this Pope collaborated with [[William Broome]] and [[Elijah Fenton]]: Broome translated eight books (2, 6, 8, 11, 12, 16, 18, 23), Fenton four (1, 4, 19, 20) and Pope the remaining twelve. Broome provided the annotations.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Fenton |first1=Elijah |title=The poetical works of Elijah Fenton with the life of the author |date=1796 |publisher=Printed for, and under the direction of, G. Cawthorn, British Library, Strand |page=7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PZDgW_comgYC&pg=PA7 |access-date=27 May 2018 |archive-date=21 April 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230421091324/https://books.google.com/books?id=PZDgW_comgYC&pg=PA7 |url-status=live }}</ref> Pope tried to conceal the extent of the collaboration, but the secret leaked out.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fraser |first=George |title=Alexander Pope |url=https://archive.org/details/alexanderpope00fras/page/52 |url-access=registration |publisher=Routledge |year=1978 |isbn=9780710089908 |page= 52}}</ref> It did some damage to Pope's reputation for a time, but not to his profits.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Damrosch |first=Leopold |title=The Imaginative World of Alexander Pope |url=https://archive.org/details/imaginativeworld0000damr |url-access=registration |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |year=1987 |page=[https://archive.org/details/imaginativeworld0000damr/page/59 59]|isbn=9780520059757 }}</ref> [[Leslie Stephen]] considered Pope's portion of the ''Odyssey'' inferior to his version of the ''Iliad'', given that Pope had put more effort into the earlier work – to which, in any case, his style was better suited.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Stephen |first1=Sir Leslie |title=Alexander Pope |date=1880 |publisher=Harper & Brothers |pages=[https://archive.org/details/alexanderpope07stepgoog/page/n96 80] |url=https://archive.org/details/alexanderpope07stepgoog}}</ref>

===Shakespeare's works===
In this period, Pope was employed by the publisher [[Jacob Tonson]] to produce an opulent new edition of Shakespeare.<ref name="Pope-Shakespeare-Tonson">{{Cite web |title=Preface to Shakespeare, 1725, Alexander Pope |url=https://shakespearebrasileiro.org/en/preface-to-shakespeare-1725-alexander-pope/ |website=ShakespeareBrasileiro |access-date=10 March 2020 |archive-date=11 January 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200111152105/https://shakespearebrasileiro.org/en/preface-to-shakespeare-1725-alexander-pope/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> When it appeared in 1725, it silently regularised Shakespeare's metre and rewrote his verse in several places. Pope also removed about 1,560 lines of Shakespeare's material, arguing that some appealed to him more than others.<ref name="Pope-Shakespeare-Tonson"/> In 1726, the lawyer, poet and pantomime-deviser [[Lewis Theobald]] published a scathing pamphlet called ''Shakespeare Restored'', which catalogued the errors in Pope's work and suggested several revisions to the text. This enraged Pope, wherefore Theobald became the main target of Pope's ''Dunciad''.<ref>[https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lewis-Theobald#ref59272 "Lewis Theobald"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200814063758/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lewis-Theobald#ref59272 |date=14 August 2020 }} ''Encyclopaedia Britannica''.</ref>

The second edition of Pope's ''Shakespeare'' appeared in 1728.<ref name="Pope-Shakespeare-Tonson"/> Apart from some minor revisions to the preface, it seems that Pope had little to do with it. Most later 18th-century editors of Shakespeare dismissed Pope's creatively motivated approach to textual criticism. Pope's preface continued to be highly rated. It was suggested that Shakespeare's texts were thoroughly contaminated by actors' interpolations and they would influence editors for most of the 18th century.