The Intelligencer

by Jonathan Swift

In 1728-1729, Jonathan Swift and his friend Thomas Sheridan anonymously published the Intelligencer , a trenchant and often witty commentary on the Irish social and political scene in the year before the publication of A Modest Proposal . The first collected edition of the Intelligencer since 1730, this volume presents the rare original Dublin pamphlets, including full commentary and appendices based on contemporary broadsides, newspapers, and manuscripts, and a fresh bibliographical analysis of the work's textual transmission.

380 pages, Hardcover

First published April 30, 1992

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".