A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation, According to the Most Polite Mode and Method now Used at Court, ... In Three Dialogues. By Simon Wagstaff, Esq

by Jonathan Swift

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.
Western literary study flows out of eighteenth-century works by Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Frances Burney, Denis Diderot, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others. Experience the birth of the modern novel, or compare the development of language using dictionaries and grammar discourses.
++++
The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification:
++++
British Library

T097412

Simon Wagstaff, Esq; = Jonathan Swift. With a preliminary advertisement leaf. In this edition, the headpiece on p.[i] contains a picture of Neptune; catchword p.[i]: of.

London: printed for B. Motte, and C. Bathurst, 1738. [4], lxxxvi, [2],215, [1]p.; 8�

308 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1738

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

[Cheryl]

"This book by Jonathan Swift is a satire on the use of clichés: its purported author, Simon Wagstaff, “can faithfully assure the Reader, that there is not one single witty Phrase in this whole Collection, which hath not received the Stamp and Approbation of at least one hundred Years.” The phrase to teach one’s grandmother to suck eggs was therefore already proverbial in the early 18th century."

word histories (dot) net

https://wordhistories.net/2016/10/12/...

[LemontreeLime · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mind blowing 18th century memes. I love this thing so much, i try to imagine people actually saying all these things and meaning it.