The Rape of the Lock

New editions were run off within three weeks, and again in December that year, 1726.

John Gay, Swift's English contemporary and himself no slouch in the satire business, as author of The Beggar's Opera, for instance, wrote soon after Gulliver's publication, quote, "...from the highest to the lowest it is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery." Another close friend, the poet Alexander Pope, already famous for, among other things, his long satirical verse, The Rape of the Lock, was even more energetic as a publicist for Swift.

Word spread fast overseas, and almost immediately the travels were published in French, in Dutch, and thereafter many, many other languages.

And just what did it satirize? Well, lots of things, of course.

The bodies parted, and there, sitting in a sad Buddha-like pose, with a tussle of curls in his hands and tears in his eyes, was Jason Spud McKinley, whom I would, over the course of the year, come to know as one of the soundest lads in the place.

I can't definitively say that witnessing this mock epic scene is the reason why Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock would become one of my favourite poems, but it must have been a factor.

Such a display of vulnerability by boys in the boarding school was rare.

It was and remains all too rare amongst the male of the species generally.

The grand register makes the small thing ridiculous, and it makes the reader lean in.

The masterpiece of the form in English is The Rape of the Lock.

It's a poem about a young aristocrat having a lock of her hair snipped off at a party.

written up as if it were the Trojan War.