Pope Alexander - The Dunciad in Four Books

THE

DUNCIAD

IN FOUR BOOKS

LONGMAN ANNOTATED TEXTS

GENERAL EDITORS

Charlotte Brewer, Hertford College, Oxford

H. R. Woudhuysen, University College London

Daniel Karlin, University College London

PUBLISHED TITLES

Michael Mason, Wordsworth and Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads

Alexandra Barratt, Womens Writing in Middle English

Tim Armstrong, Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems

Ren Weis, King Lear: A Parallel Text Edition

Randall Martin, Women Writers in Renaissance England

Helen Phillips and Nick Havely, Chaucers Dream Poetry

Valerie Rumbold, Alexander Pope: The Dunciad in Four Books

Virginia Blair, Victorian Women Poets

ALEXANDER POPE

THE

DUNCIAD

IN FOUR BOOKS

EDITED BY

VALERIE RUMBOLD

First published 1999 by Pearson Education Limited

Second edition published 2009

Published 2014 by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1999, 2009, Taylor & Francis.

The right of Valerie Rumbold to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN 13: 978-1-4082-0416-0 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pope, Alexander, 16881744.

The Dunciad : in four books / edited by Valerie Rumbold. 2nd ed.

p. cm. (Longman annotated texts)

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN 978-1-4082-0416-0 (pbk.)

1. Verse satire, English. 2. Literature publishing Poetry. 3. Authorship Poetry. I. Rumbold, Valerie. II. Title.

PR3625.A2R86 2008

821.5dc22

2008031246

Set by 35 in 9/12pt Stone Serif and 8.75/11pt Amasis

CONTENTS

This edition would have been impossible to complete without the generous support of friends and colleagues. Howard Erskine-Hill and Roger Lonsdale have been patient in their encouragement of what has seemed at times a very slow project, and I am particularly grateful to them for their time and care in reading the commentary. I am also grateful to J. Paul Hunter, William Kinsley, Sarah Prescott and Bruce Redford for allowing me to see and to quote from their unpublished work. Don Fowler has given invaluable help with classical allusions; and Christine Gerrard, Isobel Grundy, Brean Hammond, Rosamond McGuinness, Isabel Rivers and Ruth Smith have been unstinting in sharing knowledge and ideas.

I have been particularly fortunate in the bibliographical expertise I have been able to draw upon. At the outset of the project James Sutherland responded generously to my enquiries, and David Vander Meulen shared with me some of the detailed results of his work on the bibliography of the Dunciads. James McLaverty has been an unfailing source of information and ideas on typography, bookmaking and the book trade; and his indefatigable and judicious reading of text and commentary has saved me from many errors. I am also grateful to David Foxon for arranging for me to examine his fine-paper copy of The Dunciad in Four Books, since presented to the Bodleian Library.

Research involving the numbers of eighteenth-century books required for a project of this kind can only be undertaken in a major library, and I am grateful to Bill Tydeman and Tom Corns, my successive heads of department in Bangor, for helping to secure the support of the various bodies whose contributions have made extended library visits possible: the Research Committee of the University of Wales, Bangor, helped with start-up funding; the English Department supplied further financial support and arranged study leave; the British Academy supported the project under its Small Personal Research Grants scheme; and St Johns College, Oxford, provided a Summer Visiting Scholarship. Without such practical support this project would not have been feasible.

My bibliography gives some idea of the burdens I have placed on library staff over the years: the staff of the Upper Reserve in the Bodleian Library have been patient and helpful throughout, and Ann Illsley and Marion Poulton in the Main Arts Library in Bangor have contributed invaluable expertise in mobilising resources. In the English Department Office in Bangor I should like to thank Michelle Harrison, Gail Kincaid and Linda Jones, who have helped in all kinds of practical ways.

I would like to thank the Longman editorial team for supporting this project throughout. The enthusiasm of Henry Woudhuysen, academic editor to the series, has been a constant encouragement, and Katy Coutts, my copy-editor, has coped with the complexities of the typescript with remarkable calmness and thoroughness.

No-one is likely to edit The Dunciad in Four Books without wondering periodically why they started and how they can ever hope to finish: the line Calld to this work by Dulness, Jove, and Fate has, in this context, a discomforting ring. I have been fortunate to have had so many tolerant listeners, both in my own department in Bangor and elsewhere. My deepest debt of gratitude, on this score as on so many others, is, as always, to Ian.

The publishers are grateful to the British Library for the illustration on p. viii, the spoof royal arms on pp. 27 and 396, and the monograms on p. 28, all taken from The Dunciad in Four Books (Alexander Pope), 1743 edition. British Library Board. All Rights Reserved (shelfmark: 6411 17(1)).