Pope reveals in his introductory statement, "The Design", that An Essay on Man was originally conceived as part of a longer philosophical poem which would have been expanded on through four separate books. The poem was originally published anonymously Pope did not admit authorship until 1735.
They appeared in early 1733, with the fourth epistle published the following year. Pope began work on it in 1729, and had finished the first three by 1731. The essay, written in heroic couplets, comprises four epistles. Rousseau also critiqued the work, questioning "Pope's uncritical assumption that there must be an unbroken chain of being all the way from inanimate matter up to God." Later however, Voltaire renounced his admiration for Pope's and Leibniz's optimism and even wrote a novel, Candide, as a satire on their philosophy of ethics.
Kant was fond of the poem and would recite long passages from it to his students. In 1756 Rousseau wrote to Voltaire admiring the poem and saying that it "softens my ills and brings me patience". Voltaire called it "the most beautiful, the most useful, the most sublime didactic poem ever written in any language". On its publication, An Essay on Man received great admiration throughout Europe. Moral Epistles has been known under various other names including Ethic Epistles and Moral Essays. Pope's Essay on Man and Moral Epistles were designed to be the parts of a system of ethics which he wanted to express in poetry. Poem by Alexander Pope Alexander Pope published An Essay on Man in 1734.
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