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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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The Rape of the Lock
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(1712)
Mock-heroic poem by *Pope, based on a real incident which had caused friction between two families of his acquaintance. At a party the 20-year-old Lord Petre had cut off a lock of Miss Arabella Fermor's hair. In treating the event as something out of Homer, Pope used laughter to defuse the issue. The result is a poem of delightful wit and delicacy following a nymph, named Belinda, through the rituals of her fashionable day up to the moment of the rape. The lock of hair ends as a new comet in the heavens. An extended version of the poem was published in 1714.
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