The Oxford Edition of Alexander Pope's Miscellany Poems

FAIN: FEL-282608-22

Stephen Edwin Karian
Mizzou (Columbia, MO 65211-3020)

Research and writing leading to a scholarly edition of the miscellany poems of English author Alexander Pope (1688-1744).

I am creating a major new edition of the Miscellany Poems of Alexander Pope (1688-1744). This 700-page volume is part of the 24-volume Oxford Edition of the Writings of Alexander Pope being published by Oxford University Press. For this most canonical poet, Miscellany Poems features non-canonical perspectives. It contains poems Pope deliberately excluded from authorized collections, instead allowing them to circulate anonymously in printed and manuscript texts. My edition will clarify which poems Pope wrote and how he revised them. It will also explain the meaning and significance of particular words and phrases, and will provide a reliable and authoritative edition that scholars will use for years to come. Editorial work is foundational to humanistic study, giving scholars the opportunity to bridge historical and cultural gaps. Bridging such gaps is always difficult, but scholarly editions bring us into closer contact with past writers and thinkers.

Associated Products

Establishing Pope's Poetic Canon (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Establishing Pope's Poetic Canon
Author: Stephen Karian
Abstract: Which poems did Alexander Pope write? This question has seemed unnecessary given that Pope directly authorized several volumes of his Works and given that scholars have largely accepted the canon established in the Twickenham Edition, including volume six, Minor Poems edited by Norman Ault and John Butt. Yet the treatment of doubtful or borderline poems in the Twickenham Edition in the 1950s is not nearly as thorough as the scrutiny Harold Williams brought to Swift's poetic canon in the 1930s. With the exception of notable articles by Pat Rogers and others, little attention since the Twickenham Edition has been paid to the problem of Pope's poetic canon. It's time to revisit the entire canon, determining which poems we can confidently say Pope wrote, which he probably wrote, and which he probably didn't or certainly didn't write. This effort requires examining every attribution made during Pope's lifetime and since, including Edmund Curll's attributions, the especially challenging case of the four-volume Swift-Pope Miscellanies, attributions from nineteenth-century editors such as Bowles and Carruthers, and the many attributions first made by Ault. This paper will survey such matters and will comment on methods of attribution and deattribution, emphasizing the importance of evidence external to the words and style of the poems themselves.
Date: 04/04/24
Conference Name: American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Toronto)

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