Abstract Scholars have known since the mid-nineteenth century that Alexander Pope substantially revised his letters before publishing them. Pope selected, edited, readdressed, and conflated letters. I show that a letter from Pope to William Wycherley, printed as genuine in the standard modern edition of George Sherburn (1956), was likely not written in 1710 but rather fabricated for publication in the volume where it first appeared, an octavo edition of Pope’s letters published by James Roberts in 1737. The letter has hitherto escaped detection because it does not use Pope’s already known techniques of revision and conflation; rather, it is fabricated from whole cloth using realistic details of time, place, and character taken from genuine 1710 letters that Pope had access to in the mid-1730s. This article presents the textual and biographical evidence, reconstructs in detail how Pope likely fabricated the letter, explains why a fabrication is consistent with the larger history of his letters to and from Wycherley and goals in printing his correspondence, and argues that Pope was likely motivated by salesmanship (the desire to present hitherto unpublished letters in the 1737 edition in order to distinguish it from earlier piracies) and by his love of tricks and hoaxes for their own sake.
Jacob Sider Jost (Fri,) studied this question.