Editing An Essay on Criticism (section)

== Composition ==

The first fragmentary drafts of the work were written in [[Abberley]] in 1707.<ref>Mack 1985, p. 168.</ref> It was first published in May 1711.<ref>Mack 1985, p. 177.</ref> Many of the poem's ideas had existed in prose form since at least 1706. Composed in [[heroic couplets]] (pairs of adjacent rhyming lines of [[iambic pentameter]]) and written in the [[Satire#Horatian|Horatian mode]] of satire, it is a verse essay primarily concerned with how writers and critics behave in the new literary commerce of Pope's contemporary age. The poem covers a range of good criticism and advice, and represents many of the chief literary ideals of Pope's age.