He took about three years to finish An Essay on Criticism

One of the interesting facts about Alexander Pope is that he took about three years to finish An Essay on Criticism. On May 15, 1711, An Essay on Criticism was originally published anonymously. Pope began writing the poem early in his career and finished it three years later. The poem's epic couplet style was a relatively new poetry form at the time of publication, and Pope's work was an ambitious endeavor to identify and refine his own perspectives as a poet and critic. It was said to be a response to the ongoing argument over whether poetry should be natural or created according to predefined artificial principles passed down from the classical past.

The work opens with a description of the standard norms that govern poetry, based on which a critic makes a decision. Pope discusses the classical authors who dealt with such criteria and the authority he believes they should be given. He highlights the rules that a critic should follow when studying poetry, emphasizing the critical role that critics have in assisting poets with their works rather than simply condemning them. An Essay on Criticism concludes with a discussion of the moral attributes and virtues inherent in a perfect critic, whom Pope thinks is also the ideal man.