A political biography must first of all be a biography. In other words, it needs to tell the story of a life with special reference to politics – which we could roughly define as the subject's interactions with public controversy of his or her time. There are particular grounds for caution in the case of an individual like Pope, for whom the vocation of writing mattered far more than the day-to-day struggles in parliament, and who (for good reasons, to be spelled out shortly) seldom intervened directly in the political process. This book does not seek to conduct a full structural analysis of the party system in the early Hanoverian age, or to offer a minute description of the course of events in Westminster, the streets of London or the shires. Nor shall I give a comprehensive account of the leading players in the ideological battles Pope witnessed. What the book attempts is to locate Pope's position in the major controversies of the day, and to say enough of the issues to make sense of the stance he took – or in some cases did not take. Many key figures in the contests and dissentions, such as the Duke of Marlborough, the Earl of Oxford, Lord Bolingbroke, Robert Walpole, Francis Atterbury and William Pulteney, were well known to him: some became intimate friends. The pages that follow will explore these relationships, but in the context of Pope's own development as a man and a writer. It is the trajectory of his career that determines the shape of this narrative, rather than the external course of politics.

His personal inclinations, as well as issues of health and religion, debarred Pope from activity in the public sphere – something that marks him off from many of his contemporaries in the literary world. Unlike Swift and Manley, he did not conduct journals or write pamphlets in the cause of party. Unlike Addison and Steele, he did not enter parliament or accept posts awarded by government patronage. Unlike Prior, he did not represent Britain in a diplomatic role. Unlike Gay, he was never sent abroad in the retinue of an official embassy. Unlike Congreve, he held no comfortable sinecure.