Essential Writings of Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, to English parents, in 1667. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and Oxford, he was ordained in the Anglican Church in 1795 and later served for more than three decades as Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. In 1704, he published the religious-themed A Tale of a Tub, the first of the trenchantly satirical works on which his reputation rests. Along with his friends Alexander Pope and John Gay, Swift helped make the eighteenth century a golden age of social and political satire in Britain. After a brief stint as a Tory pamphleteer in London, the self-styled Irish patriot returned to Dublin in 1714. In later years, he vented what he called his “savage indignation” in a wide range of literary registers, from the Rabelaisian humor of his masterpiece, Gulliver’s Travels (1726), to the dystopian vision of infanticide in A Modest Proposal (1729). He died in 1745. Claude Rawson is Maynard Mack Professor of English at Yale University. He is the author of God, Gulliver, and Genocide: Barbarism and the European Imagination: 1492–1945, English Satire and the Satire Tradition, and Satire and Sentiment, 1660–1830: Stress Points in the English Augustan Tradition. He is General Editor of the Works of Jonathan Swift (Cambridge University Press) and co-editor, with Ian Higgins, of the Oxford World Classics edition of Gulliver's Travels. Ian Higgins is the author of Swift's Politics: A Study in Disaffection (1994) and Jonathan Swift (2004), and is an editor (with Claude Rawson) of Gulliver's Travels (2005). He is a Reader in English at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, where he teaches courses on early modern and eighteenth-century literature and on British imperial fiction.

• Preface IntroductionA Note on the TextsThe Texts of The Essential Writings of Jonathan SwiftEARLY SATIRES AND POLITICAL WRITINGS (1704-1711)A Tale of a TubThe Battle of the BooksThe Mechanical Operation of the SpiritAn Argument Against Abolishing ChristianityThe Examiner, no. 16. November 23, 1710A Short Character of his Excellency Thomas Earl of WhartonII. PARODIES, HOAXES, SOTTISIERS (1703-1745)A Meditation Upon a Broom-StickPredictions for the Year 1708The Accomplishment of the First of Mr. Bickerstaff's PredictionsA Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.The Last Speech and Dying Words of Ebenezor Eilliston from A Compleat Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation Directions to ServantsIII. WRITINGS ON IRELAND (1707-1737)The Story of the Injured Lady and The Answer to the Injured LadySermon, Causes of the Wretched Condition of IrelandA Letter to a Young Gentleman, Lately entered into Holy OrdersA Letter to a Young Lady, On Her MarriageDrapier's Letters IDrapier's Letters IVA Short View of the State of IrelandA Modest ProposalA Proposal for Giving Badges to the BeggarsIV. GULLIVER'S TRAVELSV. POEMSVerses Wrote in a Lady's Ivory Table-BookTo Their Excellancies … The Humble Petition of Frances HarrisBaucis and PhilemonA Description of the MorningA Description of a City ShowerCadenus and VanessaThe Author upon HimselfMary the Cook-Maid's LetterOn Stella's Birth-DayPhyllis, or The Progress of LoveThe Progress of BeautyThe Progress of PoetryTo Stella, Visiting me in my SicknessTo Stella, who collected and transcribed his PoemsStella's Birth-dayTo Stella on Her Birth-dayA Satirical Elegy on the Death of a late Famous GeneralThe Progress of MarriageStella's Birth-Day. A great Bottle of Wine, long buried, being that Day dug upStella at Wood-ParkTo StellaPrometheusStella's BirthdayOn Wood the Iron-mongerA Receipt to Restore Stella's YouthStella's Birth-dayClever Tom Clinch going to be hangedHolyhead. Sept. 25, 1727Irel.dDirections for Making a Birth-day SongA Dialogue between an eminent Lawyer and Dr. Swift Dean of St. Patrick'sTraulusThe Lady's Dressing RoomA Beautiful Young Nymph Going to BedStrephon and ChloeCassinus and Peter, a Tragical ElegyTo Mr GayVerses on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D.To a LadyOn Poetry: A RapsodyThe Yahoo's OverthrowThe Legion ClubContextsCONTEMPORARY DOCUMENTS, INCLUDING LETTERS, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, AND PERSONAL WRITINGSFrom Journal to Stella, Letter VI: Swift to Esther Johnson and Rebecca Dingley, October 10, 1710From Journal to Stella, Letter XXXII: Swift to Esther Johnson and Rebecca Dingley, October 9, 1711Swift to Alexander Pope, September 29, 1725Swift to Alexander Pope, November 26, 1725Swift to Charles Wogan, July-August 2, 1732Swift to William Pulteney, Mary 12, 1775Of Mean and Great FiguresFamily of SwiftDeath of Mrs. JohnsonThoughts on Various SubjectsSome thoughts on Free-thinkingThoughts on ReligionFurther Thoughts on ReligionFrom William Wotton, "Observations upon The Tale of the Tub" (1705)Alexander Pope, Poems on Gulliver's TravelsCriticism1745-1940Henry Fielding [Obituary of Swift]Samuel Johnson [On A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels]Samuel Johnson [Life of Swift]Samuel Taylor Coleridge [on Gulliver's Travels]Samuel Taylor Coleridge [on Gulliver's Travels]William Makepeace Thackeray [on Gulliver's Travels and Swift's last days]D. H. Lawrence [on Swift's Celia]W. B. Yeats [on Swift, Georgian Ireland, and Stella]F. R. Leavis * "The Irony of Swift"André Breton [Swift and Black Humor]AFTER 1940 AND BY SUBJECTA TALE OF A TUBHugh Kenner * [The Tale and the book]Marcus Walsh * "Text, ‘Text,' and Swift's Tale of a Tub"Irvin Ehrenpreis * "The Battle of the Books"THE POEMSPeneople Wilson * "Feminism and the Augustans"Derek Mahon * [On Swift's Poems]POLITICS (ENGLAND AND IRELAND)Ian Higgins * "Swift's Politics"S. J. Connolly * "Swift and Protestant Ireland"GULLIVER'S TRAVELSGeorge Orwell * "Politics vs. Literature"R. S. Crane * "The Houyhnhnms, the Yahoos, and the History of Ideas"Jenny Mezciens * "Utopia and the ‘Thing which is not'"Claude Rawson * "Swift's ‘I' Narrators"Jonathan Swift: A ChronologySelected Bibliography