An Essay on Man

Voltaire called it "the most sublime didactic poem ever written in any language." Rousseau rhapsodized about its intellectual consolations. Kant recited long passages of it from memory during his lectures. And Adam Smith and David Hume drew inspiration from it in their writings. This was Alexander Pope's Essay on Man (1733 34), a masterpiece of philosophical poetry, one of the most important and controversial works of the Enlightenment, and one of the most widely read, imitated, and discussed poems of the eighteenth century. This volume introduces this essential work to a new generation of readers, recapturing the excitement and illuminating the debates it provoked from the moment of its publication. In a comprehensive introduction, Tom Jones provides a thorough discussion of the poem s attitudes, themes, composition, context, and reception, and reassesses the work s place in history. The result is the most accessible, informative, and reader-friendly edition of the poem in decades and an invaluable book for students and scholars of eighteenth-century literature and thought.