More fully Bounce to Fop: An Epistle from a Dog at Twickenham to a Dog at Court, this highly amusing poem first appeared as a twelve-page folio at the start of May 1736 under the imprint of Thomas Cooper. However, its origins go back some eight or nine years, and mystery surrounds its authorship, which has been assigned to both Swift and Pope. Manuscripts in the Harley collection, as well as a subsequent printing within the Scriblerian Miscellanies, provide different versions of the text. The manuscripts appear to date from the 1730s and may already contain alterations by Pope. These questions of dating and attribution have dominated commentary on the work, largely to the exclusion of literary assessment, and t…
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Citation: Rogers, Pat. "Bounce to Fop". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 May 2022 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=40827, accessed 08 September 2024.]