This is a lively and authoritative guide to the life Pope called ‘a warfare upon earth’. Dr Rosslyn gives a sympathetic portrait of the poet who overcame the obscurity of his origins and the embarrassment of his deformity to become the uncrowned laureate of his age - and also make the largest literary fortune since Shakespeare’s. She describes the mixture of passion and pragmatism that created poetry out of a legion of enemies (and a wide circle of distinguished friends), and pays tribute to the professionalism of a poet who thought no sacrifice too great for his art.