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| The Grotto - by GardenVisit.com |
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For a common tourist, nowadays, Twickenham, part of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, may mean nothing but a nice little spot just outside the confused threads of the big city. Yet, it undoubtedly strikes the imagination of the modern literary traveler searching for evocative paths, for this smart town is deeply steeped in eighteenth century literary memories and full of that unexcelled, refined spirit of the Augustan Age which still emanates from the remains of ancient rural England.
Twickenham was the dream of Alexander Pope.
Despite being the dominant figure in English poetry in the first half of the eighteenth century, Alexander Pope's personality was a source of animated controversy in his own lifetime. His literary career, receiving in many ways John Dryden's heritage, has been hotly debated, maybe more than any other in English literature.
Born into a prosperous Catholic family in 1688, Pope spent his childhood between the City of London and Binfield in Windsor Forest, developing a voracious appetite for reading and learning, and suffering from a severe tubercular infection which, after causing him a curvature of the spinal column, left him small and almost deformed. After a short stay in Chiswick, in 1719, the family moved to Twickenham on the Thames, his home for the rest of his life.
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