Pope’s Strange but True Relation of Edmund Curll: Blasphemy, Anti-Semitism, and the City of London

Abstract

In the long-running war between poet and bookseller, three prose pamphlets directed against Edmund Curll have been attributed to his regular antagonist Alexander Pope. The best known of these are two items that appeared in 1716, A Full and True Account of a Horrid and Barbarous Revenge by Poison, on the Body of Mr. Edmund Curll, Bookseller, followed by A Further Account of the Deplorable Condition of Mr. Edmund Curll. Much less attention has been given to a third piece, dating from four years later, whose full title reads, A Strange but True Relation How Edmund Curll, of Fleetstreet, Stationer, Out of an Extraordinary Desire of Lucre, went into Change Alley, and was Converted from the Christian Religion by certain Eminent Jews: And How he was Circumcis’d and Initiated into their Mysteries. This pamphlet has never been properly edited, and apart from editions of Swift’s works in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it has very seldom been reprinted. The work (henceforth SBTR) deserves attention in its own right, not just as appendage to the items from 1716. It is written with zest and considerable vigor. As with the previous satires on Curll, the text displays verbal invention, wickedly precise detail, and a dazzling array of allusions, even though the references to classical and historical materials supplied by the misguided narrator are nearly all erroneous. “There is real bite, malice, and energy here,” comments one reader, who draws attention to “the exuberance of the piece, and its almost riotous use of an ignorant and befuddled narrator.”