ABSTRACT
Alexander Pope had always regarded his letters as part of his literary output. Many of them were carefully revised and some were set pieces, such as his entertaining account of a ride with the enterprising Mr Lintot to Oxford. Alexander Pope admitted his burned three-quarters of the material he gathered together. Yet even after he had finished the weeding out process he was able to tell Lord Oxford in 1729, the collection was 'of some bulk'. When Alexander Pope sent the letters to be stored at Wimpole he did not tell Lord Oxford that he wanted to see them in print. In 1733, Curll advertised for facts about the poet's life for one of his infamous biographies and Alexander Pope seized his chance. Predictably Alexander Pope raised a storm about the publisher's 'shameless industry'. The illicit volume was, of course, as much the work of Alexander Pope as the legitimate one it paved the way for.
