An Essay on Man; Moral Essays and Satires by Alexander Pope

"An Essay on Man; Moral Essays and Satires" by Alexander Pope is a collection of philosophical poems published in 1733-1734. The central work attempts to "vindicate the ways of God to man," exploring humanity's place in the divine order and arguing that man must accept his position in creation's great chain. Written in heroic couplets, Pope's work popularized optimistic philosophy across Europe, though later thinkers like Voltaire satirized its central claim that "Whatever is, is right." The essays were conceived as part of a larger system of ethics expressed through poetry. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Read or download for free

How to read Url Size
Read now! https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2428.html.images 313 kB
EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2428.epub3.images 212 kB
EPUB (older E-readers) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2428.epub.images 213 kB
EPUB (no images, older E-readers) https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2428.epub.noimages 186 kB
Kindle https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2428.kf8.images 483 kB
older Kindles https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2428.kindle.images 453 kB
Plain Text UTF-8 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2428.txt.utf-8 282 kB
Download HTML (zip) https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2428/pg2428-h.zip 209 kB
There may be more files related to this item.

About this eBook

Author Pope, Alexander, 1688-1744
Editor Morley, Henry, 1822-1894
Title An Essay on Man; Moral Essays and Satires
Note Wikipedia page about this book: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Essay_on_Man
Credits Transcribed from the 1891 Cassell & Company edition by Les Bowler
Reading Level Reading ease score: 74.3 (7th grade). Fairly easy to read.
Language English
LoC Class PR: Language and Literatures: English literature
Subject English poetry -- 18th century
Category Text
EBook-No. 2428
Release Date
Most Recently Updated May 8, 2025
Copyright Status Public domain in the USA.
Downloads 2573 downloads in the last 30 days.
Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free!