The Poet and the Publisher

Pat Rogers’s lively new history, The Poet and the Publisher, presents Pope and Curll’s clashes as a long-running courtroom drama, or “Pope v. Curll”. . . [giving] us a modern sense of a figure usually portrayed as ultra-traditional, revealing him instead as a writer whose concerns about self-image and the power of presentation might be thought close to our own. * Clare Bucknell, The New York Review of Books *
In his new book, Pat Rogers, an expert on the writings of Alexander Pope and much else, resurrects what you might think was an obscure battle over copyright between Pope and the Grub Street bookseller and printer Edmund Curll. Their quarrel, though, becomes a prism through which Rogers captures the upheavals, hubbub and stench but, above all, the wit of that period, when words could have the explosive impact of hand grenades . . . His book serves as a monument to them both, a literary delicacy in the spirit of Pope, dashed with more than a little of Curll's sauce. * The Spectator *
Pat Rogers’s knowledge of Pope, Curll and their Grub Street world is, literally, encyclopaedic. He wrote the Alexander Pope Encyclopedia (2004) and several other important, deeply learned books about Pope and his contemporaries. Rogers manoeuvres skilfully through the Grub Street network of authors, fake authors, and printers-fronting-for-booksellers-fronting-for-conspirators-fronting-for-political leaders. * Times Literary Supplement *
In the course of an extraordinarily productive career spanning six decades, Pat Rogers has written cogently, perceptively and memorably about all kinds of literature, as well as about the character and capacities of literary criticism. His powers of scrutiny and summary are often arresting and always dedicated to resisting imprecision. In his latest book, Rogers imparts a fresh, first-hand excitement to historical events with which he has long been not only familiar but intimate. He knows more than anyone about Alexander Pope and Edmund Curll * Literary Review *

Antipathy between the artist and the money-men is nothing new. As Pat Rogers details in his fascinating and revelatory book, the satirist and poet Alexander Pope spent a considerable part of his life – from around 1716 until his death in 1744 – fighting the bookseller and proto-publisher Edmund Curll over the issue of copyright . . . Rogers is a scrupulously fair-minded biographer. He structures The Poet and the Publisher as a quasi-courtroom drama, marshalling the often bizarre and inexplicable anecdotes and events with clarity and wit . . . [a] tightly written tale with great learning worn pleasantly lightly.

* The Critic *
The title of the present work refers to the lawsuit Pope v. Curll of 1741: Curll had printed, without permission, a volume of Pope's letters; Pope sued and won – not only punishing Curll but also establishing that copyright extended to personal correspondence. Rogers also traces the two men's lively, thirty-year relationship, including many traded insults – e.g., in The Dunciad Pope created a character named Curll and made him the winner in the Dunce's pissing contest. Along the way, Rogers includes contemporaneous documents, many never before published. Lively and extremely informative, this book is written so that nonspecialists can enjoy it as well as profit from it. Recommended. * Choice *

a fascinating account of one of literary London’s most famous feuds . . . Both the triggers for the conflict and
the course the quarrel takes offer deep insights into the world of letters in Hanoverian England . . . From a legal point of view as well, there is much in the book which is gripping. The narration refers to the laws of copyright,
obscenity, seditious libel, blasphemous libel, fraud etc, with all of which Curll had more than a passing familiarity . . . the book is a cracking good read, and Reaktion Books deserves credit for publishing it.

* The Commonwealth Lawyer *
Rogers dives deep into 18th-century English poet, satirist, and translator Alexander Pope and his fraught relationship with the bookseller and publisher Edmund Curll, in this entertaining history . . . Rogers’s account is chock-full of original literary and historical research, and is impressive in its scope . . . What sets Rogers’s history apart is his ability to combine fastidious research with lucid, unpretentious prose. History buffs and literary-minded readers alike are in for a punchy, drama-filled treat. * Publishers Weekly *
Enlightening . . . A highly detailed, literary tit for tat for fans of publishing and literary history. * Kirkus Reviews *
In approach and style, this book is a crossover from an academic to a more accessible, entertaining, and even page-turning genre. Rogers has tried hard to make a difficult stretch of literary history available and to educe its big-picture significance. * Canadian Journal of History *
Drawing on deep familiarity with the period and its personalities, Pat Rogers has given us a witty and richly detailed account of the ongoing war between the greatest poet of the eighteenth century and its most scandalous publisher. Cleverly presented as the trial of Pope v. Curll, with scores of documents as “exhibits” and with posterity as jury, the narrative fully justifies the author’s comment that “Pope and Curll are both inherently funny.” * Leo Damrosch, author of the bestselling The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age *
Everybody who has struggled to establish the facts, let alone the truth, in the fiendishly complicated manoeuvres in the feud between Pope and Curll owes Pat Rogers a debt of gratitude. His detective work is exhilarating. Decades of research into this “improbable relationship” give him an authority beyond all others. Rogers lays out the case for and against as if in a court of law and the reader must decide. Was Curll a villain? Was Pope a double dealer? Were they well-matched “kissing cousins”? Together the pair turned literature into news, using books as weapons in a war of words that has echoed down the ages. Rogers brings clarity, scholarship and insight to the muddiest of stories and tells it with a verve and wit that even the combatants would surely admire. * Norma Clarke, Professor Emeritus, Kingston University, and author of Queen of the Wits: A Life of Laetitia Pilkington *
Pope versus Curll – a 30-year war of words (and much else) between the cleverest satirist and the sleaziest publisher of the eighteenth century – was among the most vitriolic feuds in literary history. In this definitive, richly documented account, Pat Rogers tells the story with his trademark blend of scholarly heft and analytic flair. Each chapter sheds new light on the ferocious yet oddly symbiotic relationship between the two antagonists, and on the larger implications – cultural, political, religious, social – of their endlessly surprising duel. * Thomas Keymer, Chancellor Jackman Professor, University of Toronto, and editor of The Oxford History of the Novel in English, Vol. 1 *