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VICTORIA GLENDINNING



January 2009


"A Man must fondle something," wrote Hester Thrale, with characteristic pithiness, about her horrible father who nevertheless doted on her - as did her widowed uncle and her clerical tutor. But Henry Thrale, the wealthy Southwark brewer whom she married, did not dote on her at all. "Ours was a Match of mere Prudence; and common good Liking, without the smallest Pretension to Passion on either side." Thrale was brazenly unfaithful, while keeping her permanently pregnant. She bore at least 12 children, of whom only a few daughters survived to adulthood.






Two years into the marriage, a friend brought Samuel Johnson to dinner with the Thrales. Thirty years older than Hester, widowed for a decade, eccentric, on the verge of mental collapse and living in "disorderly squalor", he was virtually adopted by them. He became their "great man-child" and to Hester, another doting father. However, if there was "an erotic element", as Ian McIntyre believes, there was no fondling. Johnson was equally attached to both the Thrales. He accompanied them on holidays at home and abroad, and had his own apartment at the top of the brewery house. Hester was clever and wrote verses, and the comparison between her lovingly teasing relationship with Johnson and Jonathan Swift's with Vanessa or Stella is inevitable and curious.






Hester was also a competent businesswoman and sorted out crises in the brewery as Mr Thrale grew depressed, ate compulsively and suffered the results of his promiscuity. Hester, on her knees, changed poultices twice a day on his swollen testicle. Even in Thrale's lifetime, she was an admiring champion of the Italian musician Gabriele Piozzi. It's hard to work out exactly when Mr Thrale did die; one of my few quarrels with McIntyre's really excellent book is that he tells you the month, sometimes even the day of the week, when things happen, but you have to backtrack for pages and pages to discover what year we are in. Another is that being a supremely rational male, he is somewhat lacking in sympathy with some of Hester's responses and reactions.






The link with Johnson was broken by her second marriage, her heart as she said being "penetrated by its Passion for Piozzi". After Johnson's death, when she published her Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson and their correspondence, Boswell became her enemy, mortified by his own "near-invisibility" in her material. Both of them had the "anecdotal itch", both embroidered, edited and rearranged even as they ensured Johnson's immortality.






McIntyre himself had a massive amount of material to embroider, edit and rearrange - Hester's copious life-long journal Thraliana and the six volumes of her published letters just for a start. He devotes half his book to her life with Piozzi, which involves a lot of travelogue, made readable by her lively judgments on places, people and current events as she moves between the continent, Bath and her family home in Wales. This second half also documents the hostility of her neglected daughters. No one at the time, however, saw anything untoward in abandoning young girls for years on end to paid minders. She had two more quasi-maternal passions, the first for a nephew of Piozzi's, on whom she lavished inordinate amounts of sentimental correspondence, property - and money, which was all he wanted from her. Her last attachment was for an actor called Conway, whom she subjected to a "rolling barrage" of outrageously affectionate letters to which he had neither the skill nor the inclination to respond.






McIntyre's biography is illuminated by the extraordinary vitality of this tiny, plump woman, who engineered passionate attachments as an outlet for her energies and who would rush into the freezing sea for a bathe in her eighties. She was always the life and soul of the party, and the heroine of her own story.






The notorious Lady Worsley was only eight years younger than Hester. Theirs was a very racy generation. As her subtitle suggests, Hallie Rubenhold's Lady Worsley's Whim is a well-researched romp. In 1782 Sir Richard Worsley, MP and Privy Counsellor, sued his wife's lover Maurice Bissett for criminal conversation, which means adultery. The "lurid sexual details" revealed in court hit the headlines. "The country gossiped about it for months while the newspapers hounded and lampooned its protagonists." Rubenhold's reconstruction of the "sordid history" of the marriage is largely garnered from the court reports, from "Grub Street drivel" and from the "obscene trash" of scandal sheets.






Lady Worsley, née Fleming, married Sir Richard when she was 18. He had an estate on the Isle of Wight. The next-door estate belonged to Bissett, who became the intimate friend of both parties. Lady W had a daughter by Bissett, who was accepted by Sir Richard as his own. Sir Richard, we gather, liked watching. He was a voyeur.






With the threat of French invasion, there was a mustering of 15,000 troops at Coxheath in Kent, among them Sir Richard's South Hampshire Militia. Lady W joined the vast undisciplined encampment, like all the other WAGs, and Bissett came too. One day, she went into Maidstone, to the baths. Her husband invited Bissett to stand on his shoulders and leer through a high window at Lady W emerging from her bath, to the delectation of all three.






Then Lady W and Bissett spoiled the threesome by running away together, leaving Sir Richard humiliated. He hired James Farrer of Farrer & Co - then as now, evidently, the solicitors of choice for high-end marital disputes. He chose not divorce, but "Separation from Bed and Board", which meant Lady W was not free to marry in her husband's lifetime. Although Sir Richard asked for £10,000 compensation, the jury, in consideration of the bath-house episode, awarded him just one shilling. He became a reclusive and fanatical collector of antiquities, bid unsuccessfully for a slave-girl in Constantinople, brought home an Abyssinian boy instead, and died.






Lady W was soon abandoned by Bissett. She was pregnant again at the time. (All her various children either died or disappeared.) Just like Hester Thrale, she chose as her second husband a foreign musician. There must have been a supply of them to hand, ready and able. Hers was Swiss, and 26 years younger.






Hester Piozzi may never have met Lady Worsley, but Fanny Burney wrote to her with all the gossip about Lady Worsley's "flaming prank", and Mrs Piozzi, if she read the newspapers, would have known that Lady Worsley and Bissett, after they eloped from Coxheath, holed up in the Royal Hotel, Pall Mall. The hotel servants testified in court about the locked door of room 14, and about instructions given at odd hours to have rumpled and stained sheets changed.






The Piozzis stayed at the same hotel a couple of years later, Hester describing it as "the very worst Hotel I have ever been at in any Capital City of Europe". Personal research reveals that the site of the Royal Hotel is now occupied by "100 Pall Mall", a serviced office complex. No bedrooms, though, so far as I know.


View Full ArticleHester: The Remarkable Life of Dr Johnson’s “Dear Mistress”


Ian McIntyre


Constable, 320 pp, £25






Lady Worsley’s Whim: An Eighteenth-Century Tale of Sex, Scandal and Divorce


Hallie Rubenhold


Chatto & Windus, 320 pp, £25


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From Jerry Morris, My Sentimental Library blog

Sentimental Library


Saturday, May 21, 2011


My Many Lives of Samuel Johnson


James Cummings, the bookseller from Signal Mtn, Tn., is fast becoming a valuable source of books for My Sentimental Library Collection. Last month I bought a book formerly owned by William Targ from him. This month I bought two books formerly owned by the Johnsonian, Gwin J. Kolb. One of them, Kolb's copy of Johnson Before Boswell: A Study of Sir John Hawkins' Life of Samuel Johnson, will be the first book in this month's blog posting, "My Many Lives of Samuel Johnson."


Johnson Before Boswell: A Study of Sir John Hawkins' Life of Samuel Johnson, by Bertram H. Davis, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960.


Hawkins's biography of LOJ was published in 1787 and was the first full-length biography of Johnson, over 600 pages. Its popularity was short-lived because of criticism of the book and its author. James Boswell was one of Hawkins's biggest detractors. I will read Davis's book, then browse Hawkins online at ECCO via my KB Library Pass, and then form my own opinion on the worth of Hawkins's LOJ.


As a bibliomaniac, I am sometimes obsessive in my collecting habits, and maybe even excessive. I have thirty-one copies of William Strunk's Elements of Style in my Elements of Style Collection. I am fast approaching that amount in the number of biographies of Samuel Johnson in my library. And I have already exceeded that number if I use the expanded meaning of the word "biography" that O.M. Brack, Jr. and Robert E. Kelley used in their book, The Early Biographies of Samuel Johnson.


In the Preface of their book, Brack and Kelley wrote:

"Biography, for the purposes of this collection, has been rather loosely defined as any account that begins with the phrase, 'Samuel Johnson was born,' or some rough equivalent, and makes some attempt, no matter how haphazard, to survey his life or his career in chronological order."


The Early Biographies of Samuel Johnson edited by O.M. Brack Jr. and Robert E. Kelley, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1974.


I will use Brack's and Kelley's expanded meaning of biography for the display of my LOJ Collection. And I will include books written about LOJ biographies, such as the one Davis wrote about Hawkins's LOJ.


Brack and Kelley provided no less than fourteen biographies of Samuel Johnson in their book. The earliest one was written in 1762 by William Rider, and was part of his book, An Historical and Critical Account of the Lives and Writings of the Living Authors of Great Britian. Wherein their respective Merits are discussed with Candor and Impartiality, London, 1762. Rider's biography of Johnson contained a whole four pages. The fourteenth biography, written by James Harrison, contained eighteen pages, and appeared in his edition of A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson, London, 1786. A number of the other biographies appeared in periodicals of the day, with most of them borrowing biographical data mentioned in Biographia Dramatica, or, A Companion to the Playhouse, first published under an abbreviated title in 1764. Brack and Kelley are quick to note that the reader will find the early biographies of Johnson somewhat repetitious. Times have not changed. Writers of today's LOJs are still trying to shed new light on old subjects, and without success.


Boswell's Life of Johnson Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and Johnson's Diary of a Journey Into South Wales by George Birkbeck Hill, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887. Six vols.
This is the "before" picture. Hill's edition of Boswell's LOJ is my most frequent source of information about Johnson's life, and by its shabby looks, was well used by its former owners. In fact, this is about how the set looked when I first bought it almost seven years ago.

An "after" picture will be forthcoming shortly, and will be posted right here. Volume VI has already been rebound in new cloth. I hope to complete all six volume in the next few days.

Tipped into the first volume was an interesting letter from G.B. Hill to a still unidentified American book collector. There was also some marginalia written in the books. I'm still researching the identity of the American book collector. I've ruled out Cowan, and am researching a Chicago bookseller, Jerrold Nedwick, whose bookseller's ticket was pasted in one of the volumes.
Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. by Rev. C Adams, New York: Carlton & Lanahan, 1869.

LOJ with a religious twist, written "for the young men of this country." Charles Adams was a Wesleyan minister. He was the president of Illinois Female College from 1858 until he resigned in July 1868 and became a clerk in the Dead Letter Office in Washington. A true "man of letters."


The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Comprising a Series of His Epistolary Correspondence and Conversation With Many Eminent Persons; and Various Original Pieces of His Composition; With a Chronological Account of His Studies and Numerous Works. The Whole Exhibiting a View of Literature and Literary Men in Great Britain For Nearly Half a Century, by James Boswell (with copious notes), London: George Routledge and Sons, 1895.
596 pages of very small type. Very hard to read.
Macauley's Life of Johnson, Edited With Introduction, Notes Etc. by Albert Perry Walker, Boston: D.C. Heath & Company, 1903






Part of Heath's English Classics Series. Macaulay wrote his life of Johnson in 1856. That and his 1831 scathing review of Croker's LOJ are included in this volume.


















Boswell's Life of Johnson, Edited by Augustine Birrell, Westminster: Archibald Constable and Co.., Boston, 1904. Six vols.






I am very disappointed with Birrell's editing of this set. In his Intro he says that his notes are few and far between because he deleted most of them, believing them unimportant (Most of the notes included are Malone's). Birrell praises G.B. Hill's edition of LOJ and writes, "When you know you must be beaten, the wisest course is to decline competition." That says a lot about Hill's edition! Birrell's publisher must have been having fits with Birrell praising a rival publisher's works.


























Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., An Abridgment, With Annotations by the Eminent Biographers and an Introduction and Notes by Mary H. Watson, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913.






Watson was a teacher at DeWitt Clinton High School in NYC. This book was part of Macmillan's Pocket American and English Classics Series.






















The Life of Samuel Johnson L.L.D. by James Boswell. Complete and Unabridged With Notes. with an Introduction by Herbert Askwith, New York: The Modern Library, n.d. but c.1930.






Number G2 of the Modern Library Giant Series. 1200 pages in all.






















Samuel Johnson by Joseph Wood Krutch, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1945 (1944)






I have yet to read this biography. What I like to do first is to go to the index and then read how the author presents certain portions of Johnson's life. If the author captures my interest great; if not, I don't think I'll miss anything new. I'll have to give Krutch a chance, though. He was the Brander Matthews Professor of Dramatic Literature, Columbia University, and the author of a number of books.


















The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell [with] Illustrations by Gordon Ross. New York: Doubleday and Company, 1946.






Part of the Literary Guild Book Club.


















The Portable Johnson and Boswell, Edited, With an Introduction by Louis Kronenberger, New York: The Viking Press, 1955 (1947)






A book to take on vacations. 762 pages worth.


















Mr. Oddity: Samuel Johnson, LL.D. by Charles Norman, Drexel Hill, Pa: Bell Publishing Company, 1951.






In between the Table of Contents and the Forward, Norman inserts a List of Characters, thirteen of which he identifies as "Non-Boswellian sources for Johnson's Life. At 348 pages, Norman's book is at least 200 pages shorter than the average LOJ biography, but bigger is not always better. I began reading this books some years ago, but for some reason stopped reading it with my bookmark on page 197. I am putting it on my reading pile again.






















The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell, London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1952. Two vols.






No. 1 of the Everyman's Library Series. As Terry Seymour, author of A Guide to Collecting Everyman's Library, Bloomington, 2005, once noted to me, "Being No. 1 in the Everyman's Library Series says a lot about what J.M. Dent thought about Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson."


See Jerry's Blog for photos of his books.


The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. by James Boswell, Esq. With Marginal comments and Markings From Two Copies Annotated by Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, Prepared For Publication With an Introduction by Edward G. Fletcher, in Three Volumes, New York: the Heritage Press, 1963.
The same edition as the Limited Editions Club, but at a lower price and lower quality of binding. I've read some of Piozzi's comments, but need to devote a week to this set alone.
Samuel Johnson: A Biography by John Wain. New York: The Viking Press, 1974.
Read and enjoyed, but nothing stands out in my memory that puts this LOJ biography above the others.
Samuel Johnson by W. Jackson Bate. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.
Sidney Ives's annotated copy with something extra that produced my essay, "An Unexpected Find in Umatilla, Florida." I found something new as well. There are over 75 page numbers written on the endpapers, and I thought these were references Ives used to create his talk before the Johnsonians. But that is not the case. The page numbers identify typos and grammatical errors in the book!
I wrote a review comparing certain portions of Nokes's book with Bate's books.
Samuel Johnson: The Life of an Author by Lawrence Lipking, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998
his book is not a biography of SJ, but rather a book about his writing career. Since it provides a survey of Johnson's works in chronological order, it meets the biographical standards set by Brack and Kelley.
According to Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge, New York: Carroll & Graff Publishers, 2001.
I'm stretching it a bit here because this book is historical fiction. But it does present a biography of sorts of Samuel Johnson from the eyes of Hester Thrale's daughter, Queeney. I've read that Dame Beryl Bainbridge insisted the characters were real, but there is at least one notable Johnsonian who publicly doubted that.
Samuel Johnson: The Struggle by Jeffrey Meyers, New York: Basic Books, 2008
This author doesn't struggle with his writing; he just churns them out. His list of works is almost a mile long. His biography of Johnson, however, didn't appeal to me. Same old stuff.
Samuel Johnson: A Biography by Peter Martin, Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008
Martin wrote biographies on Boswell and Malone as well. I have the former and want to acquire the latter.
Samuel Johnson: A Life by David Nokes, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2009.
Here's a review by John Carey in the London Sunday Times, written three months before Nokes died. Nokes emphasizes Johnson's sexual tendencies – which seems to be the thing authors of today are honing in on these days, Martin and Meyers as well. The worst is Philip Baruth's ploy in The Brothers Boswell, a 2009 historical novel in which the author insinuates that Johnson had a sexual encounter with Boswell's brother. Personally, I find such writing distasteful.
Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson by Adam Sisman, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000
To quote the blurb on the book jacket: "A dazzling study of the biographer at work."
The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. A New Edition in Twelve Volumes With an Essay on His Life and Genius by Arthur Murphy. Esq. London: Printed for F.C. and J. Rivington &c, 1823.
The first volume contains Murphy's essay, first published in 1793.
Murphy's "Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson" was included in the Murphy, Chalmers, and Tegg editions, and almost all other editions of Johnson's Works published after 1793.
Johnsoniana; Or Supplement to Boswell: Being Anecdotes and Sayings of Dr. Johnson, Collected by Piozzi, Hawkins, Tyers, Hoole, Steevens, Reynolds, Cumberland, Cradock, Seward, Murphy, Beattie, Miss Hawkins, Windham, Nichols, Humphry, Hannah More, Parr, Mad. D'Arblay, Horne, Baretti, Lady Knight, Northcote, Percy, Stockdale, Parker, Rose, Green, Reed, Kearsley, Knowles, Smith, Warner, King Boothby, Pepys, Carter &c.&c.&c. Edited by J. Wilson Croker, Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1842.
This work contains portions of the biographies written by Hawkins and Murphy, as well as the anecdotes of a number of friends in Johnson's circle. In 1831, Croker published a new edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson. It was soundly bashed by Macaulay.
Johnsonian Miscellanies Arranged and Edited by George Birkbeck Hill, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1897. 2 vols.
I include this work because it contains Johnson's Annals covering his life from birth to his eleventh year, Murphy's essay in its entirety, extracts from Hawkins's LOJ, the Piozzi Anecdotes, and more.
Johnsonian Gleanings, (3 of 10 vols) by Aleyn Lyell Reade, New York: Octagon Books, 1968 (1923-33)
I ordered Vol V on ebay because the appendix contained a listing of Johnson's Undergraduate Library thoroughly researched by Reade. The ebay seller had three volumes up for auction and sent me the wrong one. I ended up buying all three volumes just to make sure I got the right one. Vol. 4 contains appendices pertaining to Johnson's boyhood. Vol. 5 covers Johnson's life from 1728 to 1735, and Vol. 6 covers Johnson's life from 1735 to 1740.
Macaulay's and Carlyle's Essays on Samuel Johnson Edited With Introduction and Notes by William Strunk, Jr. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1895, 96.
Yes. I have two copies. Strunk was an instructor, and later a Professor, at Cornell University when he wrote this book. He was to become one of the leading Shakespeare authorities of his time. He was also the author of my favorite grammar book, The Elements of Style. Strunk's book on Johnson contains a forty-page introduction which includes a chronological table of Johnson's entire life, followed by words of wisdom on Croker's edition of Boswell's LOJ, and Strunk's views on Boswell, Macaulay and Carlyle. And that's just the Intro. Follow that by Macaulay's trouncing review of Croker's edition, and Carlyle's essay which is in effect his response to Macaulay's review. Moi recommends!
On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle, London: Chapman & Hall, 1840.
I include this work because Carlyle briefly but eloquently describes Johnson's life and his works in his essay, "The Hero as Man of Letters."
Dictionary Johnson: Samuel Johnson's Middle Years by James Clifford, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1981 (1979).
I include this work because it covers the most productive portion of Johnson's writing career from the Rambler to the Dictionary to the Idler and to Rasselas.
Boswell the Great Biographer 1789-1795, Edited by Marlies K. Davies and Frank Brady, New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1989.
A gift from James Caudle, Associate Editor of the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell during my visit to the Sterling Library, Yale University in June 2010 with Terry Seymour and Dave Larkin.
A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors Living and Deceased From the Earliest Accounts to the Latter Half of the Nineteenth Century...by S. Austin Allibone, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1874, 3 Vols and 2 Supp.
Allibone devotes 11 pages to Johnson, providing a short biography and covering all his works in chronological order.
Everyman's Dictionary of Literary Biography English & American Compiled after John w. Cousin by D.C. Browning, London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1958.
My ready reference. Sits on the edge of a nearby shelf for easy access.
Studies of a Booklover by Thomas Marc Parrott, New York: James Pott & Company, 1904.
Parrot was a Professor of English at Princeton University. This work contains a forty-one page chapter on "The Personality of Johnson." What qualifies the piece as a "biography" is a paragraph that begins, "Samuel Johnson was born in the cathedral town of Lichfield in 1709..."
The Chobham Book of English Prose by Stephen Coleridge, Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1924.
Coleridge's essay on Johnson is but one of the 54 essays included in this book. Also included is a short essay on Boswell. Coleridge does not begin his essay with "Samuel Johnson was born..." nor does he cover Johnson's works in chronological order. But the quality of the essay is such that I would include it in any listing of the LOJ.
Note: On the front pastedown, a former owner wrote the name of the place where he acquired this copy of the book: "The Old Corner Bookstore 1925."
In the Name of the Bodleian by Augustine Birrell, New York: Cahrles Scribner's Sons, 1905.
Two essays nominate this book for inclusion in my blog entry on "My Many Lives of Samuel Johnson." "The Johnsonian legend" reviews not only G.B. HIll's edition of Boswell's LOJ, but also the Johnsonian Miscellanies. And Birrell's essay, "Boswell as Biographer" seeks to show that both Macaulay and Carlyle were wrong about Boswell. Birrell wrote an essay specifically on Dr. Johnson in Obiter Dicta, Second Series that is well worth reading as well, but I would really be stretching it to call it "a biography" or "a review of a biography." It is more about Johnson's character.
The Wit and Sagacity of Dr. Johnson, Selected and Arranged by Norman J. Davidson, London: Seeley & Co., n.d..
From the Intro: "Samuel Johnson, lexicographer, essayist, poet, and philosopher, was born at Lichfield, September 18, 1709..."
This just about completes my blog on "My Many Lives of Samuel Johnson." For brevity purposes, I have omitted well over ten works from the likes of Dobson, Hyde, Fleeman, Taine, and others which would have qualified under my expanded definition of biography. Some of these works are listed in My Samuel Johnson Collection on Library Thing.
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About Me


Jerry Morris


I am a book collector. I enjoy reading, researching, and writing about books. I have five blogs, four of which pertain to books:


My Sentimental Library will contain posts about books formerly owned by authors and other notable people whose books I collect. Older posts on this topic will remain in my Bibliophiles in My Library blog.


Bibliophiles In My Library will contain posts about the bibliophiles in my library, including talks I've given about them.


Biblio Researching will contain posts about research I've conducted in bibliographical areas.


The Displaced Book Collector. I wrote in this blog in 2007 when we were in Hawaii watching some of our grandchildren while their father was in Iraq.


Idlewild Blue Yonder contains posts about my life: my childhood growing up near Idlewild Airport, my career in the Air Force, and then my career with the Post Office.


View my complete profile

Book links to Johnson-Boswell comments by Craig Ferguson

Hi Jordan,

James Boswell also commented on his new friendship.
James wrote: "Craig Ferguson was making things up for fun, the way Boswell did. To clarify, this is a page about the historical figure, James Boswell, not an 'impersonation page': I am not a historical re-enactor. My facebook page on Boswell is not, alas, authored by an individual named James Boswell. Neither Johnson nor Boswell were gay...and Johnson, at least by the time he knew Boswell, was not indulging with prostitutes (his earlier sex life is much murkier). There is good material on sexuality in eighteenth century literature. If you find the topic of intellectual interest, you should probably read Rictor Norton's book Mother Clap's Molly House ( http://www.facebook.com/l/ca144/www.amazon.com/Mother-Claps-Molly-House-Subculture/dp/0854491880). And Thomas A. King, “How (Not) to Queer Boswell,” in *Queer People: Negotiations and Expressions of Homosexuality, 1700–1800*, ed. Chris Mounsey and Caroline Gonda (Lewisburg: Bucknell Univ. Press, 2007), pp. 114–58. I do not work on the history of sexuality, but a lot of careful historical writing has been done on it."


See: The comment page of James Boswell on Facebook

Samuel Johnson as a Swiftian Satirist!! Where is He???

Satire


The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition
2008
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press.
Satire: term applied to any work of literature or art whose objective is ridicule. It is more easily recognized than defined. From ancient times satirists have shared a common aim: to expose foolishness in all its guises—vanity, hypocrisy, pedantry, idolatry, bigotry, sentimentality—and to effect reform through such exposure. The many diverse forms their statements have taken reflect the origin of the word satire, which is derived from the Latin satura, meaning "dish of mixed fruits," hence a medley.

Classical Satirists

Outstanding among the classical satirists was the Greek dramatist Aristophanes, whose play The Clouds (423 BC) satirizes Socrates as the embodiment of atheism and sophistry, while The Wasps (422) satirizes the Athenian court system. The satiric styles of two Roman poets, Horace and Juvenal, became models for writers of later ages. The satire of Horace is mild, gently amused, yet sophisticated, whereas that of Juvenal is vitriolic and replete with moral indignation; Shakespeare later wrote Horatian satire and Jonathan Swift wrote Juvenalian satire.


The Golden Age of Satire


From the beast fables, fabliaux, and Chaucerian caricatures to the extended treatments of John Skelton, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Erasmus, and Cervantes, the satirical tradition flourished throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, culminating in the golden age of satire in the late 17th and early 18th cent. The familiar names of Swift, Samuel Butler, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Richard Steele, Henry Fielding, and William Hogarth, in England, and of Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, La Fontaine, Molière, and Voltaire, in France, suggest not only the nature of the controversies that provided a target for the satirist's darts in both nations, but also the rediscovery and consequent adaptation of the classical models to individual talents. Pope, for example, wrote The Rape of the Lock (1714), a mock epic about the crisis that occurs when a lock of Lady Belinda's hair is snipped off by a suitor as she sips her coffee. The poem is based upon an actual happening, and Pope's Horatian tone gently castigates the frivolous life of London society. Swift, on the other hand, echoes Juvenal's "savage indignation." In Gulliver's Travels (1726), Swift exposes humanity in all its baseness and cruelty. Throughout his encounters with the inhabitants of imaginary lands, starting with the Lilliputians and ending with the Houyhnhnms—the latter are horses endowed with noble attributes, while their servants are bestial, filthy humanoids called Yahoos—Gulliver's (and Swift's) misanthropy grows, culminating in his refusal, once he is reunited with his family, to eat with creatures so closely resembling Yahoos.

The Nineteenth Century

In the 19th cent., satire gave way to a more gentle form of criticism. Manners and morals were still ridiculed but usually in the framework of a longer work, such as a novel. However, satire can be found in the poems of Lord Byron, in the librettos of William S. Gilbert, in the plays of Oscar Wilde and G. B. Shaw, and in the fiction of W. M. Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Samuel Butler, and many others. American satirists of the period include Washington Irving, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Mark Twain.

The Twentieth Century

Although 20th-century satire continues to register Horatian or Juvenalian reactions to the enormities of an age dominated by fear of the atom bomb and plagued by pollution, racism, drugs, planned obsolescence, and the abuse of power, critics have discerned some shifts in its source. In some instances the satirist is the audience rather than the artist. Hence the enthusiasm in the 1960s for "camp" —defined by Susan Sontag as meaning works of art that can be enjoyed but not taken seriously, even though they may have been created seriously—indeed, works that are enjoyed for the very qualities that make them second-rate. Sontag's examples of "camp" include Tiffany lamps, the ballet Swan Lake, and the movie Casablanca. Occasionally the audience is the victim of the satire. The so-called put-on, whether a play (Samuel Beckett's Breath, in which breathing is heard on a blacked-out stage), a joke (Lenny Bruce's nightclub routines), or an artifact (John Chamberlain's smashed-up cars), seeks to confuse its audience by presenting the fraudulent as a true work of art, thus rendering the whole concept of "art" questionable. More conventional contemporary satirists of note are Sinclair Lewis, James Thurber, Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, W. H. Auden, Philip Roth, and Joseph Heller.

Bibliography

See G. Highet, The Anatomy of Satire (1962); L. Feinberg, The Satirist (1963); A. Kernan, The Plot of Satire (1965); critical anthology ed. by J. Russell and A. Brown (1967); J. R. Clark, ed., Satire—That Blasted Art (1973); M. Seidel, The Satiric Inheritance (1979); H. D. Weinbrot, Eighteenth Century Satire: Essays on Text and Context from Dryden to Peter Pindar (1988).

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Four Lives of Swift

Jonathan Swift - 4 reference results

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Jonathan Swift
Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745, English author, b. Dublin. He is widely recognized as one of the greatest satirists in the English language.
Early Life and Works


Since his father, an Englishman who had settled in Ireland, died before his birth and his mother deserted him for some time, Swift was dependent upon an uncle for his education. He was sent first to Kilkenny School and then to Trinity College, Dublin, where he managed, in spite of his rebellious behavior, to obtain a degree. In 1689 he became secretary to Sir William Temple at Moor Park, Surrey, where he formed his lifelong attachment to Esther Johnson, the "Stella" of his famous journal. Disappointed of church preferment in England, Swift returned to Ireland, where he was ordained an Anglican priest and in 1695 was given the small prebend of Kilroot.






Unable to make a success in Ireland, Swift returned to Moor Park the following year, remaining until Temple's death in 1699. During this period he wrote The Battle of the Books, in which he defended Temple's contention that the ancients were superior to the moderns in literature and learning, and A Tale of a Tub, a satire on religious excesses. These works were not published, however, until 1704. Again disappointment with his advancement sent him back to Ireland, where he was given the living of Laracor.






In the course of numerous visits to London he became friendly with Addison and Steele and active in Whig politics. His Whig sympathies were severed, however, when that party demonstrated its unfriendliness to the Anglican Church. In 1708 he began a series of pamphlets on ecclesiastical issues with his ironic Argument against Abolishing Christianity. He joined the Tories in 1710, edited the Tory Examiner for a year, and wrote various political pamphlets, notably The Conduct of the Allies (1711), Remarks on the Barrier Treaty (1712), and The Public Spirit of the Whigs (1714), in reply to Steele's Crisis.






Later Life and Works


In 1713 Swift joined Pope, Arbuthnot, Gay, and others in forming the celebrated Scriblerus Club. About this time Swift became involved with another woman, Esther Vanhomrigh, the "Vanessa" of his poem Cadenus and Vanessa. The intensity of his relationship with her, as with Stella, is questionable, but Vanessa died a few weeks after his final rupture with her in 1723. Swift became a national hero of the Irish with his Drapier Letters (1724) and his bitterly ironical pamphlet A Modest Proposal (1729), which propounds that the children of the poor be sold as food for the tables of the rich.






Swift's satirical masterpiece Gulliver's Travels appeared in 1726. Written in four parts, it describes the travels of Lemuel Gulliver to Lilliput, a land inhabited by tiny people whose diminutive size renders all their pompous activities absurd; to Brobdingnag, a land populated by giants who are amused when Gulliver tells them about the glories of England; to Laputa and its neighbor Lagado, peopled by quack philosophers and scientists; and to the land of the Houhynhnms, where horses behave with reason and men, called Yahoos, behave as beasts. Ironically, this ruthless satire of human follies subsequently was turned into an expurgated story for children. In his last years Swift was paralyzed and afflicted with a brain disorder, and by 1742 he was declared unsound of mind. He was buried in St. Patrick's, Dublin, beside Stella.






Bibliography


See his prose (ed. by H. Davis, 14 vol., 1939; repr. 1964-68); his poetry (ed. by H. Davis, 3 vol., 2d ed. 1958), The Portable Swift, ed. by C. Van Doren (new ed. 1968); his correspondence (ed. by H. Williams, 5 vol., 1963); biographies by J. M. Murray (1954), I. Ephrenpreis (3 vol., 1962-83), C. Van Doren (1930, repr. 1964), D. Nokes (1985), and V. Glendinning (1999); studies by R. Quintana (1936, repr. 1965; and 1955, repr. 1962), R. Hunting (1966), N. F. Dennis (1964, repr. 1967), D. Donoghue (1969), Louise K. Barnett (1981).






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Jonathan Swift














Jonathan Swift, detail of an oil painting by Charles Jervas; in the National Portrait Gallery, elipsis


(born Nov. 30, 1667, Dublin, Ire.—died Oct. 19, 1745, Dublin) Irish author, the foremost prose satirist in English. He was a student at Dublin's Trinity College during the anti-Catholic Revolution of 1688 in England. Irish Catholic reaction in Dublin led Swift, a Protestant, to seek security in England, where he spent various intervals before 1714. He was ordained an Anglican priest in 1695. His first major work, A Tale of a Tub (1704), comprises three satiric sketches on religion and learning; he also became known for religious and political essays and impish pamphlets written under the name “Isaac Bickerstaff.” Reluctantly setting aside his loyalty to the Whigs, in 1710 he became the leading writer for the Tories because of their support for the established church. Journal to Stella (written 1710–13) consists of letters recording his reactions to the changing world. As a reward for writing and editing Tory publications, in 1713 he was awarded the deanery of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. He spent nearly all the rest of his life in Ireland, where he devoted himself to exposing English wrongheadedness and their unfair treatment of the Irish. His ironic tract “A Modest Proposal” (1729) proposes ameliorating Irish poverty by butchering children and selling them as food to wealthy English landlords. His famously brilliant and bitter satire Gulliver's Travels (1726), ostensibly the story of its hero's encounters with various races and societies in remote regions, reflects Swift's vision of humanity's ambiguous position between bestiality and rationality.






Learn more about Swift, Jonathan with a free trial on Britannica.com.






Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Jonathan Swift


Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin.






He is remembered for works such as Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift originally published all of his works under pseudonyms — such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier — or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire; the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.






Biography


Youth


Jonathan Swift was born at No. 7, Hoey's Court, Dublin, and was the second child and only son of Jonathan Swift (a second cousin of John Dryden) and wife Abigail Erick (or Herrick), paternal grandson of Thomas Swift and wife Elizabeth Dryden, daughter of Nicholas Dryden (brother of Sir Erasmus Dryden, 1st Baronet Dryden) and wife Mary Emyley. His father was Irish born and his mother was born in England. Swift arrived seven months after his father's untimely death. Most of the facts of Swift's early life are obscure, confused and sometimes contradictory. It is widely believed that his mother returned to England when Jonathan was still very young, then leaving him to be raised by his father's family. His uncle Godwin took primary responsibility for the young Jonathan, sending him with one of his cousins to Kilkenny College (also attended by the philosopher George Berkeley).






In 1682 he attended Dublin University ( Trinity College, Dublin), receiving his B.A. in 1686. Swift was studying for his Master's degree when political troubles in Ireland surrounding the Glorious Revolution forced him to leave for England in 1688, where his mother helped him get a position as secretary and personal assistant of Sir William Temple at Moor Park, Farnham. Temple was an English diplomat who, having arranged the Triple Alliance of 1668, retired from public service to his country estate to tend his gardens and write his memoirs. Growing into confidence with his employer, Swift "was often trusted with matters of great importance." Within three years of their acquaintance, Temple had introduced his secretary to William III, and sent him to London to urge the King to consent to a bill for triennial Parliaments.






When Swift took up his residence at Moor Park, he met Esther Johnson, then 8 years old, the fatherless daughter of one of the household servants. Swift acted as her tutor and mentor, giving her the nickname "Stella" and the two maintained a close, but ambiguous relationship for the rest of Esther's life.






Swift left Temple in 1690 for Ireland because of his health, but returned to Moor Park the following year. The illness, fits of vertigo or giddiness — now known to be Ménière's disease — would continue to plague Swift throughout his life. During this second stay with Temple, Swift received his M.A. from Hertford College, Oxford University in 1692. Then, apparently despairing of gaining a better position through Temple's patronage, Swift left Moor Park to become an ordained priest in the Established Church of Ireland and in 1694 he was appointed to the prebend of Kilroot in the Diocese of Connor, with his parish located at Kilroot, near Carrickfergus in County Antrim.






Swift appears to have been miserable in his new position, being isolated in a small, remote community far from the centres of power and influence. While at Kilroot, however, Swift may well have become romantically involved with Jane Waring. A letter from him survives, offering to remain if she would marry him and promising to leave and never return to Ireland if she refused. She presumably refused, because Swift left his post and returned to England and Temple's service at Moor Park in 1696, and he remained there until Temple's death. There he was employed in helping to prepare Temple's memoirs and correspondence for publication. During this time Swift wrote The Battle of the Books, a satire responding to critics of Temple's Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1690). Battle was however not published until 1704.






On January 27 1699 Temple died. Swift stayed on briefly in England to complete the editing of Temple's memoirs, and perhaps in the hope that recognition of his work might earn him a suitable position in England. However, Swift's work made enemies of some of Temple's family and friends who objected to indiscretions included in the memoirs. His next move was to approach King William directly, based on his imagined connection through Temple and a belief that he had been promised a position. This failed so miserably that he accepted the lesser post of secretary and chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley, one of the Lords Justices of Ireland. However, when he reached Ireland he found that the secretaryship had already been given to another. But he soon obtained the living of Laracor, Agher, and Rathbeggan, and the prebend of Dunlavin in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.






At Laracor, a mile or two from Trim, County Meath, and twenty miles (32 km) from Dublin, Swift ministered to a congregation of about fifteen people, and had abundant leisure for cultivating his garden, making a canal (after the Dutch fashion of Moor Park), planting willows, and rebuilding the vicarage. As chaplain to Lord Berkeley, he spent much of his time in Dublin and traveled to London frequently over the next ten years. In 1701, Swift published, anonymously, a political pamphlet, A Discourse on the Contests and Dissentions in Athens and Rome .






The writer


In February 1702, Swift received his Doctor of Divinity degree from Trinity College, Dublin. That spring he traveled to England and returned to Ireland in October, accompanied by Esther Johnson — now twenty years old — and his friend Rebecca Dingley, another member of William Temple's household. There is a great mystery and controversy over Swift's relationship with Esther Johnson nicknamed "Stella". Many hold that they were secretly married in 1716. Although there has never been definite proof of this, there is no doubt that she was dearer to him than anyone else and that his feelings for her did not change throughout his life.






During his visits to England in these years Swift published A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books (1704) and began to gain a reputation as a writer. This led to close, lifelong friendships with Alexander Pope, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot, forming the core of the Martinus Scriblerus Club (founded in 1713).






Swift became increasingly active politically in these years. From 1707 to 1709 and again in 1710, Swift was in London, unsuccessfully urging upon the Whig administration of Lord Godolphin the claims of the Irish clergy to the First-Fruits and Twentieths ("Queen Anne's Bounty"), which brought in about £2500 a year, already granted to their brethren in England. He found the opposition Tory leadership more sympathetic to his cause and Swift was recruited to support their cause as editor of the Examiner when they came to power in 1710. In 1711, Swift published the political pamphlet "The Conduct of the Allies," attacking the Whig government for its inability to end the prolonged war with France. The incoming Tory government conducted secret (and illegal) negotiations with France, resulting in the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) ending the War of the Spanish Succession.






Swift was part of the inner circle of the Tory government, and often acted as mediator between Henry St. John (Viscount Bolingbroke) the secretary of state for foreign affairs (1710–15) and Robert Harley (Earl of Oxford) lord treasurer and prime minister (1711–1714). Swift recorded his experiences and thoughts during this difficult time in a long series of letters to Esther Johnson, later collected and published as The Journal to Stella . The animosity between the two Tory leaders eventually led to the dismissal of Harley in 1714. With the death of Queen Anne and ascension of George I that year, the Whigs returned to power and the Tory leaders were tried for treason for conducting secret negotiations with France.






Also during these years in London, Swift became acquainted with the Vanhomrigh family and became involved with one of the daughters, Esther, yet another fatherless young woman and an ambiguous relationship to confuse Swift's biographers. Swift furnished Esther with the nickname "Vanessa" and she features as one of the main characters in his poem Cadenus and Vanessa. The poem and their correspondence suggests that Esther was infatuated with Swift, that he may have reciprocated her affections, only to regret it and then try to break it off. Esther followed Swift to Ireland in 1714, where there appears to have been a confrontation, possibly involving Esther Johnson. Esther Vanhomrigh died in 1723 at the age of 35. Another lady with whom he had a close but less intense relationship, was Anne Long, a toast of the Kit-Cat Club.






Maturity


Before the fall of the Tory government, Swift hoped that his services would be rewarded with a church appointment in England. However, Queen Anne appeared to have taken a dislike to Swift and thwarted these efforts. The best position his friends could secure for him was the Deanery of St. Patrick's, Dublin. With the return of the Whigs, Swift's best move was to leave England and he returned to Ireland in disappointment, a virtual exile, to live "like a rat in a hole".






Once in Ireland, however, Swift began to turn his pamphleteering skills in support of Irish causes, producing some of his most memorable works: Proposal for Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720), Drapier's Letters (1724), and A Modest Proposal (1729), earning him the status of an Irish patriot.






Also during these years, he began writing his masterpiece, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships , better known as Gulliver's Travels. Much of the material reflects his political experiences of the preceding decade. For instance, the episode when the giant Gulliver puts out the Lilliputian palace fire by urinating on it can be seen as a metaphor for the Tories' illegal peace treaty; having done a good thing in an unfortunate manner. In 1726 he paid a long-deferred visit to London, taking with him the manuscript of Gulliver's Travels. During his visit he stayed with his old friends, Alexander Pope, John Arbuthnot, and John Gay, who helped him arrange for the anonymous publication of his book. First published in November 1726, it was an immediate hit, with a total of three printings that year and another in early 1727. French, German, and Dutch translations appeared in 1727 and pirated copies were printed in Ireland.






Swift returned to England one more time in 1727 and stayed with Alexander Pope once again. The visit was cut short when he received word that Esther Johnson was dying and Swift rushed back home to be with her. On 28 January 1728, Esther Johnson died, though he prayed at her bedside, even composing prayers for her comfort. Swift could not bear to be present at the end, but on the night of her death he began to write his The Death of Mrs. Johnson . He was too ill to attend the funeral at St. Patrick's. Many years later, a lock of hair, assumed to be Esther Johnson's, was found in his desk, wrapped in a paper bearing the words, "Only a woman's hair."






Death became a frequent feature in Swift's life from this point. In 1731 he wrote Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, his own obituary published in 1739. In 1732, his good friend and collaborator John Gay died. In 1735, John Arbuthnot, another friend from his days in London, died. In 1738 Swift began to show signs of illness and in 1742 he appears to have suffered a stroke, losing the ability to speak and realizing his worst fears of becoming mentally disabled. ("I shall be like that tree," he once said, "I shall die at the top.") In order to protect him from unscrupulous hangers on, who had begun to prey on the great man, his closest companions had him declared of "unsound mind and memory." However, it was long believed by many that Swift was really insane at this point. In his book Literature and Western Man, author J.B. Priestley even cites the final chapters of Gulliver's Travels as proof of Swift's approaching "insanity".






In 1744, Alexander Pope died. Then, on October 19, 1745, Swift died. After being laid out in public view for the people of Dublin to pay their last respects, he was buried by Esther Johnson's side, in accordance with his wishes. The bulk of his fortune was left to found a hospital for the mentally ill, originally known as St. Patrick’s Hospital for Imbeciles, which opened in 1757, and which still exists as a psychiatric hospital.






Epitaph






Text extracted from the introduction to The Journal to Stella by George A. Aitken and from other sources)


Jonathan Swift wrote his own epitaph:










Hic depositum est Corpus


JONATHAN SWIFT S.T.D.


Huyus Ecclesiæ Cathedralis


Decani,


Ubi sæva Indignatio


Ulterius


Cor lacerare nequit,


Abi Viator


Et imitare, si poteris,


Strenuum pro virili


Libertatis Vindicatorem.






Obiit 19 Die Mensis Octobris


A.D. 1745 Anno Ætatis 78.


which William Butler Yeats translated from the Latin as:










Swift has sailed into his rest.


Savage indignation there


cannot lacerate his breast.


Imitate him if you dare,


world-besotted traveller.


He served human liberty.


Works


Swift was a prolific writer, famous for his satires. The most recent collection of his prose works (Herbert Davis, ed. Basil Blackwell, 1965-) comprises fourteen volumes. A recent edition of his complete poetry (Pat Rodges, ed. Penguin, 1983) is 953 pages long. One edition of his correspondence (David Woolley, ed. P. Lang, 1999) fills three volumes.


Major prose works


Swift's first major prose play, A Tale of a Tub, demonstrates many of the themes and stylistic techniques he would employ in his later work. It is at once wildly playful and funny while being pointed and harshly critical of its targets. In its main thread, the Tale recounts the exploits of three sons, representing the main threads of Christianity, who receive a bequest from their father of a coat each, with the added instructions to make no alterations whatsoever. However, the sons soon find that their coats have fallen out of current fashion and begin to look for loopholes in their father's will which will allow them to make the needed alterations. As each finds his own means of getting around their father's admonition, they struggle with each other for power and dominance. Inserted into this story, in alternating chapters, Swift includes a series of whimsical "digressions" on various subjects.






In 1690, Sir William Temple, Swift's patron, published An Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning a defense of classical writing (see Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns) holding up the Epistles of Phalaris as an example. William Wotton responded to Temple with Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1694) showing that the Epistles were a later forgery. A response by the supporters of the Ancients was then made by Charles Boyle (later the 4th Earl of Orrery and father of Swift's first biographer). A further retort on the Modern side came from Richard Bentley, one of the pre-eminent scholars of the day, in his essay Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris (1699). However, the final words on the topic belong to Swift in his Battle of the Books (1697, published 1704) in which he makes a humorous defense on behalf of Temple and the cause of the Ancients.






In 1708, a cobbler named John Partridge published a popular almanac of astrological predictions. Because Partridge falsely determined the deaths of several church officials, Swift attacked Partridge in Predictions For The Ensuing Year by Isaac Bickerstaff, a parody predicting that Partridge would die on March 29th. Swift followed up with a pamphlet issued on March 30th claiming that Partridge had in fact died, which was widely believed despite Partridge's statements to the contrary.






Drapier's Letters (1724) was a series of pamphlets against the monopoly granted by the English government to William Wood to provide the Irish with copper coinage. It was widely believed that Wood would need to flood Ireland with debased coinage in order make a profit. In these "letters" Swift posed as a shop-keeper--a draper--in order to criticize the plan. Swift's writing was so effective in undermining opinion in the project that a reward was offered by the government to anyone disclosing the true identity of the author. Though hardly a secret (on returning to Dublin after one of his trips to England, Swift was greeted with a banner, "Welcome Home, Drapier") no one turned Swift in. The government eventually resorted to hiring none other than Sir Isaac Newton to certify the soundness of Wood's coinage to counter Swift's accusations. In "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" (1739) Swift recalled this as one of his best achievements.






Gulliver's Travels, first published in 1726, is Swift's masterpiece. As with his other writings, the Travels was published under a pseudonym, the fictional Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon and later a sea captain. Some of the correspondence between printer Benj. Motte and Gulliver's also-fictional cousin negotiating the book's publication has survived. Though it has often been mistakenly thought of and published in bowdlerized form as a children's book, it is a great and sophisticated satire of human nature based on Swift's experience of his times. Gulliver's Travels is an anatomy of human nature, a sardonic looking-glass, often criticized for its apparent misanthropy. It asks its readers to refute it, to deny that it has not adequately characterized human nature and society. Each of the four books--recounting four voyages to mostly-fictional exotic lands--has a different theme, but all are attempts to deflate human pride. Critics hail the work as a satiric reflection on the failings of Enlightenment modernism.






In 1729, he published A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public, a satire in which the narrator, with intentionally grotesque logic, recommends that Ireland's poor escape their poverty by selling their children as food to the rich: ”I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food...” Following the satirical form, he introduces the reforms he is actually suggesting by deriding them:






Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients...taxing our absentees...using [nothing] except what is of our own growth and manufacture...rejecting...foreign luxury...introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance...learning to love our country...quitting our animosities and factions...teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants....Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like expedients, 'till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice.


According to other sources, Richard Steele uses the personae of Isaac Bickerstaff and was the one who wrote about the "death" of John Partridge and published it in The Spectator, not Jonathan Swift.*






Essays, tracts, pamphlets, periodicals






"A Meditation upon a Broomstick" (1703–1710): Full text: munseys.com


"A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind" (1707–1711)


The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers (1708–1709): Full text: U of Adelaide


" An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity" (1708–1711): Full text: U of Adelaide


The Intelligencer (with Thomas Sheridan) (1710-????): Text: Project Gutenberg


The Examiner (1710): Texts: Ourcivilisation.com, Project Gutenberg


"A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue" (1712): Full texts: Jack Lynch, U of Virginia


"On the Conduct of the Allies" (1713)


"Hints Toward an Essay on Conversation" (1713): Full text: Bartleby.com


"A Letter to a Young Gentleman, Lately Entered into Holy Orders" (1720)


"A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet" (1721): Full text: Bartleby.com


Drapier's Letters (1724, 1725): Full text: Project Gutenberg


"Bon Mots de Stella" (1726): a curiously irrelevant appendix to "Gulliver's Travels"


" A Modest Proposal", perhaps the most famous satire in English, suggesting that the Irish should engage in cannibalism. (Written in 1729)


"An Essay on the Fates of Clergymen": Full text: JaffeBros


"A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding": Full text: Bartleby.com






Poems






"Ode to the Athenian Society" 1692 (first published work)


Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Texts at Project Gutenberg: Volume One, Volume Two


"Baucis and Philemon" (1706–1709): Full text: Blackmask


"A Description of the Morning" (1709): Full annotated text: U of Toronto; Another text: U of Virginia


"A Description of a City Shower" (1710): Full text: U of Virginia


"Cadenus and Vanessa" (1713): Full text: Blackmask


"Phillis, or, the Progress of Love" (1719): Full text: theotherpages.org


Stella's birthday poems:






1719. Full annotated text: U of Toronto


1720. Full text: U of Virginia


1727. Full text: U of Toronto


"The Progress of Beauty" (1719–1720): Full text: OurCivilisation.com


"The Progress of Poetry" (1720): Full text: theotherpages.org


"A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General" (1722): Full text: U of Toronto


"To Quilca, a Country House not in Good Repair" (1725): Full text: U of Toronto


"Advice to the Grub Street Verse-writers" (1726): Full text: U of Toronto


"The Furniture of a Woman's Mind" (1727)


"On a Very Old Glass" (1728): Full text: Gosford.co.uk


"A Pastoral Dialogue" (1729): Full text: Gosford.co.uk


"The Grand Question debated Whether Hamilton's Bawn should be turned into a Barrack or a Malt House" (1729): Full text: Gosford.co.uk


"On Stephen Duck, the Thresher and Favourite Poet" (1730): Full text: U of Toronto


"Death and Daphne" (1730): Full text: OurCivilisation.com


"The Place of the Damn'd" (1731): Full text


"A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed" (1731): Full annotated text: Jack Lynch; Another text: U of Virginia


"Strephon and Chloe" (1731): Full annotated text: Jack Lynch; Another text: U of Virginia


"Helter Skelter" (1731): Full text: OurCivilisation.com


"Cassinus and Peter: A Tragical Elegy" (1731): Full annotated text: Jack Lynch


"The Day of Judgment" (1731): Full text


"Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D." (1731–1732): Full annotated texts: Jack Lynch, U of Toronto; Non-annotated text:: U of Virginia


"An Epistle To A Lady" (1732): Full text: OurCivilisation.com


"The Beasts' Confession to the Priest" (1732): Full annotated text: U of Toronto


"The Lady's Dressing Room" (1732): Full annotated text: Jack Lynch


"On Poetry: A Rhapsody" (1733)


"The Puppet Show" Full text: Worldwideschool.org


"The Logicians Refuted" Full text: Worldwideschool.org






Correspondence, personal writings






"When I Come to Be Old" — Swift's resolutions. (1699): Full text: JaffeBros


The Journal to Stella (1710–1713): Full text (presented as daily entries): ; Extracts: OurCivilisation.com;


Letters:






Selected Letters: JaffeBros


To Oxford and Pope: OurCivilisation.com


'The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, D.D'. Edited by David Woolley. In four volumes, plus index volume. Frankfurt am Main ; New York : P. Lang, c1999-c2007.






Sermons, prayers






Three Sermons and Three Prayers. Full text: U of Adelaide, Project Gutenberg


Three Sermons: I. on mutual subjection. II. on conscience. III. on the trinity. Text: Project Gutenberg


Writings on Religion and the Church. Text at Project Gutenberg: Volume One, Volume Two


"The First He Wrote Oct. 17, 1727." Full text: Worldwideschool.org


"The Second Prayer Was Written Nov. 6, 1727." Full text: Worldwideschool.org






Miscellany






Directions to Servants (1731):: Extracts: OurCivilisation.com


A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation (1738)


"Thoughts on Various Subjects." Full text: U of Adelaide


Historical Writings: Project Gutenberg


Swift Quotations: JaffeBros — many choice, well-documented Swift quotations here


Swift quotes at Bartleby: Bartleby.com — 59 quotations, with notes






Legacy


John Ruskin named him as one of the three people in history who were the most influential for him.






Notes


Biographical sources






Samuel Johnson's "Life of Swift": JaffeBros From his Lives of the Poets .


William Makepeace Thackeray's influential vitriolic biography: JaffeBros From his English Humourists of The Eighteenth Century .


Bullitt, John M. Jonathan Swift and the Anatomy of Satire: A Study of Satiric Technique , 1953, Cambridge: Harvard U P,


Jae Num Lee "Swift and Scatological Satire", 1971, University of New Mexico Press, ISBN 0826301967 jstor review


Lee, Jae Num. "Scatology in Continental Satirical Writings from Aristophanes to Rabelais" and "English Scatological Writings from Skelton to Pope." Swift and Scatological Satire. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1971. 7–22; 23–53.


Susan Gubar " The Female Monster in Augustan Satire" Signs, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Winter, 1977), pp. 380–394


Many other sources are listed here






External links






e-texts of Swift's works






at The Online Books Page


Works by Jonathan Swift at Project Gutenberg


at Gulliver's Travels


Free audiobook of A Modest Proposal from LibriVox










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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.


Last updated on Tuesday October 07, 2008 at 10:10:41 PDT (GMT -0700)


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