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Alexander Pope Wrote a 35-Page Takedown of a Historian

CGP Grey · 10.3M views · 2021-09-09 · 21:32

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Overview

CGP Grey tells the story of Alexander Pope's long takedown of a historian, Thomas Hearne, framed around the quirks of library books and archival research. It is a funny, digressive video essay about literary feuds and tracking down original sources.

On Hacker News

HN commenters point to it as a masterpiece of humorous archival detective work and a great watch about books and libraries.

Recommended by 5 HN people across 5 months · HN mentions 2021–2025

Topics

Literature & writing craftWorld historyDocumentaries & storytelling
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alexander popearchival researchlibrary bookscgp greyhistory

What people said

rozab · 2022-09 · Strong recommendation

To see this gloriously realised, check out CGP Grey's description of Pope's feud with Thomas Hearne. Linking the full video because it's a masterpiece [VIDEO]

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fossuser · 2021-12 · Strong recommendation

For a really great video mostly about checking out books from a library watch this: [VIDEO] I found it pretty funny that hundreds of years later he unearthed an old written feud that ended up directly affecting him in a way which caused him to empathize with one of the sides.

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ChrisbyMe · 2025-12 · Recommendation

Very cool. If you're interested in things like this you might wanna checkout CGP Grey's videos on tracking down various stories from books through archives. [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by CGP Grey, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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