Major Works

by Jonathan Swift, Angus Ross (Editor), David Woolley (Editor)

This authoritative edition brings together a unique selection from the full range of Swift's fifty-year career--prose, poetry, and letters--to give the essence of his work and thinking. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) is best known as the author of Gulliver's Travels, which alone would have secured his place in the history of English literature. But in addition to this classic fictional satire, Swift wrote numerous works concerning politics, religion, and Ireland, some savage, others humorous, all suffused with his tremendous wit and inventiveness. This anthology includes satirical works such as A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books, political pamphlets, pieces for the popular press, poems, and a generous selection from Swift's correspondence. Presented chronologically, the anthology offers a new and clearer awareness of the unity as well as the complexity of Swift's vision, and
the powerful bonds between disparate pieces.

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, 18th Century, Classics, Short Stories, Literature, Essays

768 pages, Paperback

First published September 6, 1984

About the author

Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift".
Swift is remembered for works such as A Tale of a Tub (1704), An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1712), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729). He is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier—or anonymously. He was a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
His deadpan, ironic writing style, particularly in A Modest Proposal, has led to such satire being subsequently termed "Swiftian".

Reviews

[W.D. Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not going to lie to you and say that this wasn't the slog that it surely was. Whether it was I who dragged this squat, ugly tome through the past seven months, or it me—is now, finally, moot. Cos it's over, free at last, free at last!

If you ever took those period-survey English lit courses in uni, did you, too, dread those volumes, published by Norton and Riverside, that squished the whole era into one fat book with tiny margins and tinier type? Well, the Oxford Authors/Major Works series is a similar kind of pig, sporting a bit of lipstick perhaps, but with lots of bacon*/scholarly apparatus. Good, nourishing fare, if/when you hungry. But hardly appetizing.

If Leo Damrosch's excellent, witty Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World provided the precipatative amuse-gueule for this eat-a-thon, it was John Stubbs' exquisite Michelin-grade skills (cf. Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel) who kept me in the room, ever-returning to the endless buffet for yet still more helpings, and who made it all digestible for yours truly, an evident Mr. Creosote here.

I'd likely dine and dash, but you know me...and what's more, the waiter just brought over that "waffer-thin-mint", the The Complete Poems. See you in 6 months (if I don't explode)!

*Not only are pigs perhaps smarter than my border collies, none were harmed in the making of this "review". I won't stop you from eating them, but. And: bacon-eating vegans, I see you!

[kaelan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Swift was a very topical writer and only a handful of these essays, letters and poems—"A Modest Proposal," "The Battle of the Books," "A Tale of a Tub"...—succeed as more or less stand-alone pieces, divorced from the particular circumstances that birthed them. Suffice to say, I spent a good deal of time flipping back and forth between the text and the endnotes. Yet this much is clear: Swift is a brilliant prose stylist and a more than adequate poet (although I remain partial to Pope). And as a satirist, he complements one of English lit's most biting wits with a strong sense of justness, favouring principles over cheap insults and narrow-minded factionalism. As the good Dean once eulogized of himself,

Perhaps I may allow, the Dean
Had too much satire in his vein,
And seemed determin'd not to starve it,
Because no age could more deserve it.
Yet, malice never was him aim;
He lash'd the vice, but spared the name.
No individual could resent
Where thousands equally were meant.
His satire points at no defect,
But what all mortals may correct;
For he abhorr'd that senseless tribe
Who call it humour when they jibe:
He spar'd a hump, or crooked nose,
Whose owners set not up for beaux,
True genuine dullness moved his pity,
Unless it offered to be witty.

Maybe Saturday Night Live could take note.

[John Cairns · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over all, it's pretty good and he does come up to Juvenal's standard eventually despite the fact he risked trial for sedition, even treason, if found out to be the author of the Drapier Letters etc. Juvenal didn't satirise anything or anyone to do with Domitian because to do so would've entailed death. I really liked A Modest Proposal but also liked the poems, certain lines of which were familiar, probably because included in Palgrave's Golden Treasury, a school book, so stood out for that reason or because so good they would be included in it eg Poor Pope will grieve a month; and Gay/A week, and Arbuthnot a day. /St John himself will scarce forbear/To bite his pen, and drop a tear from On the Death of Dr Swift. I wondered if I hadn't unconsciously picked up the phrase, 'supply my defects' and used the like in my own An Instance etc', substituting 'deficiencies' for defects but it's a common enough expression and I didn't bother pursuing it. My appreciation of Swift isn't just literary, as of Pope, but of a writer who gets stuck into his time, in its politics, putting his writing abilities to use and making an effective dent. There's nothing namby-pamby about Swift or miminy-piminy about his attitude or writing.

[Jacob Hurley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I concur with the other reviewers who say that Swift is an interesting writer but boring to read. These works, primarily topical and political, mostly show Swift working in a very agile but limited mold whereby he satirically assaults various opponents in present-day scandals, presented with immaculate sensibility but no inclination to go beyond journalism; and poems primarily in the same vein as Pope's contemporaneous satirical works. Like Pope, Swift was very widely learned and knew all about scholastic and Cartesian metaphysics, alchemy, gnosticism and other religious heresies, Hobbes, as well as a full survey of the Greeks and Romans; his attitudes are incredibly non-dogmatic and intelligent, finding the faults in everything and playing them against one another. Just as, in Rape of the Lock and the Dunciad, Pope's most interesting things are the apparently ironic but incredibly involved esoteric allusions, so too here are Swift's little hints at (anti-)gnostic/alchemical adventures vastly more interesting than his dozens upon dozens of pages on each little tax scandal and policy debate. Within him is trapped a transcendental artist like a Sterne, a Beckett, a Yeats, a Joyce, almost supernaturally bound in subservience to the incredibly banal scope of 18th century British politics . . . . even in his writings on Ireland, Swift's latent understanding of the evils of Anglo-Saxonry are artificially constrained into a generic Anglo-Irish feeling that Eire is better off under the United Kingdom. Aside from the very rich Tale of a Tub, some of the longer poems, and maybe a journal article or two for taste, nothing in here is really worth reading in itself, but nevertheless it all serves as a full exposition on the absolutely stifled genius of another Irish excellent. NB: Gulliver's Travels is not included here nor does my review concern it, having yet to read it myself.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe I got this collection in order to read both "A Modest Proposal" (probably read decades ago) and "Tale of a Tub". I think I had already read all four parts of "Gulliver's Travels" some time ago but that is well worth a revisit.

There is a great deal to "Gulliver's Travels" beyond the first book which is so dispersed culturally that it was the stuff of the more seriously literary Saturday morning cartoons of my youth.

I always think of Book III, Chapter V when iMessage encourages me to replace a word I have just typed with a little emoji picture - going to try to construct an entire sentence using only those images!

"[Another] project was, a scheme for entirely abolishing all words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health, as well as brevity. For it is plain, that every word we speak is, in some degree, a diminution of our lunge by corrosion, and, consequently, contributes to the shortening of our lives. An expedient was therefore offered, "that since words are only names for things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were necessary to express a particular business they are to discourse on." ... many of the most learned and wise adhere to the new scheme of expressing themselves by things; which has only this inconvenience attending it, that if a man's business be very great, and of various kinds, he must be obliged, in proportion, to carry a greater bundle of things upon his back, unless he can afford one or two strong servants to attend him. I have often beheld two of those sages almost sinking under the weight of their packs, like pedlars among us, who, when they met in the street, would lay down their loads, open their sacks, and hold conversation for an hour together; then put up their implements, help each other to resume their burdens, and take their leave."

[Joti · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Modest Proposal is one of my faves!!!
I love the assortment of poems to Stella too
Besides The Tale of a Tub, I genuinely enjoy Swift - I didn’t get to read everything of his for this class but I’d like to check out the rest of his works someday!!

[Kaus Wei · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I set out to read this, I had every intention of reading it cover to cover over the course of coming days, but that has proved to be a significant chore. The nature of the prose makes it necessary to do some moderate amount of translation, for while it is written in english, and only a century separates it from the works of Dickens (which I can read quite easily), that century has made a great difference in the style that the english language is used.

I confess, I knew that the language would be challenging, but I did not anticipate the rebellion my brain would launch when faced with having to read 600 pages of such prose for the next several days (or more probably, weeks). This is more a book that is placed on an easily accessible shelf, where it may be pulled from at any time, when curiosity strikes, and the reader may take in a dozen pages here and there over the course of years; which is precisely what I mean to do.

[Matt Hudak · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rapier wit for the ages.