Jonathan Swift: Criticism (1)


Chronological Listing (Crit 1) Alphabetical Listing (Crit 2)
[Note: Titles of prominent critical works on Swift are compiled in RICORSO by date (Crit 1) and by author-alphabetical (Crit 2) fronting surnames in the second list. It is advisable to search both for any author or title since the second on recompiled from the first on intermittent occasions only.

Swift Studies (1968- ) is an annual critical review edited from the Ehrenpreis Centre by Hermann J. Real at Munster, Germany. See “Contents 1968-2101” - online [accessed 12.09.2011].

Herman Teerink & A. H. Scouten, A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of Jonathan Swift DD (Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1937; rev. edn. Pennsylvania UP 1963) is the standard work (rep. 2002). Standard biographies by Henry Craik, John Middleton Murry, and G. C. Unwin are all available at Our Civilisation (web-ed., Philip Atkinson) - online; accessed 08.03.2011.

Early and classic “Lives”
  • William King, LL.D., Some Remarks on the Tale of a Tub, to which are annexed Mully of Mountoun, and Orpheus and Euridice (London: for A. Baldwin 1704), [10], 63, [3]pp., 8o. [bio-dates 1663-1712; not Archb. King.]
  • William Wotton, ‘Observations upon the Tale of a Tub’, in A Defense of the Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning, In Answer to the Objections of Sir W. Temple, and Others, with Observations upon the Tale of a Tub (1705).
  • Matthew Concanen, Letter on Swift and Pope’s Miscellanies, in British Journal (25 Nov. 1727).
  • Concanen, Matthew, et al., A Compleat Collection of all the Verses, Essays, Letters, and Advertisements Occasion’d by Mr. Pope and Swift’s Miscellanies (London: A. Moore 1728), xv. 52pp.
  • Lord Orrery [John Boyle; 5th Earl], Remarks on the Life and Writings of Jonathan Swift in a Series of Letters to his Son the Hon. Hamilton Boyle (Dublin: Faulkner 1752), port. of Swift [prev. in The Monthly Review, Nov. 1751] - extract; see also bibl. details of sundry responses to this text, infra.]
  • [Patrick Delany,] A letter to Dean Swift, Esq.: on his Essay upon the life, writings, and character of Dr. J. Swift. By the author of the Observations of Lord Orrery’s Remarks, &c. (London: W. Reeve [&] A. Linde [et al.] 1755), 31, [1]p., 8vo.[vaar. 1754].
  • Deane Swift, An Essay upon the Life, Writings, and Character, of Dr. Jonathan Swift: Interspersed with some occasional animadversions upon the Remarks of a late critical author, and upon the Observations of an anonymous writer [Patrick Delany] on those Remarks […] To which is added, that sketch of Dr. Swift’s life written by the Doctor himself (London: for Charles Bathurst 1755), 375, 53pp., 8o.
  • John Hawkesworth, Life of the Revd. Jonathan Swift: D.D. Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin. (1755) ; ([London &] Dublin: re-printed for S. Cotter 1755), viii, 176pp., 8o.; rep. in Three Biographical Pamphlets, 1745-1758 [Swiftiana, 13] (NY: Garland Pub. 1975), 209pp. [with Life by Dilworth and Swift’s testament; see note].
  • Laetitia Pilkington, ‘Swift’s Conduct as a Host’, in Memoirs, Vol. 1 [1749], rep. in Robert A. Greenberg & William Bowman Piper, eds., The Writings of Jonathan Swift [Norton Critical Edition] (NY: 1973), pp.605-08 [see also Spence’s Laetitia Pilkington].
  • Gentleman’s Magazine (Nov. 1757).
  • Thomas Sheridan, The Life of the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Swift (Dublin 1785) [see Contents under Sheridan, supra].
  • Nathan Drake, Jonathan Swift, 3 vols. (London: C. Whittingham 1805).
  • Rev. John Barrett, An Essay on the Early Life (1808).
  • Sir Walter Scott, Life of Swift (1814).
  • W. Monck Mason, ‘Life of Swift’, as appendix to his History of St. Patrick’s (1819).
  • Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Biographical Dictionary of Irish Worthies [....], 2 vols. [1819-21] Vol. II (London & Dublin 1821), pp.578-89 [see attached].
  • Sir Leslie Stephen, Swift [English Men of Letters ] (London: Macmillan 1882, 1899, 1902, 1903, 1908, 1925), x, 214pp. [extract], and Do. [rep. edn.] (NY: AMS 1968).
  • ‘Swift’, in Rev. W. Harris, et. al., eds., The Oxford Encyclopaedia (Oxford: Bartlett and Hinton 1828), vol. 6, p.748.
  • Thackeray, W. M., ‘Swift’, in The Four Georges: The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century (London: Smith, Elder 1895), pp.119-55.
  • John Foster, The Life of Jonathan Swift, Vol. 1 [and only]: 1667-1711 London: John Murray 1875), xvi, 477pp., pl. & port. engr. [Paul-Adolphe Rajon after C. Jervas].
  • Henry Craik, The Life of Jonathan Swift (London: John Murray 1882), xxiii, 576pp., and Do., as The Life of Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, 2 vols. [2nd edn.] (London: Macmillan 1894) [standard up to 1949].
  • Sir William Wilde, The Closing Years of the Life of Dean Swift (Dublin: Hodges & Smith 1849); Do. [2nd edn., rev. & enl. 1849).
  • J[ohn] Churton Collins [err. Ellis], Jonathan Swift, A Biographical and Critical Study (1893).
  • Sir Shane Leslie, The Skull of Swift: An Extempore Exhumation (London: Chatto & Windus 1928), 347pp.
  • G. P. Moriarty, Dean Swift and His Writings (1893).
  • W. H. Lecky, in Leaders of Public Opinion (1861) [sketch of Swift]
  • Max Simon, Swift; étude psychologique et littéraire, suivie d’un essai sur les médecins de Gil Blas [à propos du prétendu plagiat de Le Sage] (Paris 1893).
  • Augustine Birrell, ‘Dean Swift’, in Essays about Men, Women, and Books (London: Stock 1895), pp.1-15.
  • Lytton Strachey, ‘Jonathan Swift’ [1909], in Spectatorial Essays (London: Chatto & Windus 1964), pp.141-46.[
  • Carl Van Doren, Life of Swift (NY: The Viking Press 1930), 279pp. [Bibl. Note, pp.253-55].
  • Stephen Gwynn, The Life and Friendships of Dean Swift (London: Thornton Butterworth 1933).
  • S W. D. Taylor, Jonathan Swift: A Critical Essay (London 1933).
  • J. Mario M. Rossi and Joseph M. Hone, Swift, or The Egotist (London 1934).
  • Ricardo Quintana, The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift (NY: OUP 1936; 2nd edn. Gloucester MA; London: Methuen 1953).
  • Newman Bertram, Life of Swift (London: Allen & Unwin 1937), 432pp.
  • John Middleton Murry, Jonathan Swift: A Critical Biography (London: Jonathan Cape 1954).
  • William Bragg Ewald, Jnr., The Masks of Jonathan Swift (Harvard UP 1954).
  • Ricardo Quintana, Swift: An Introduction (OUP 1955, reps. 1962), and Do. [rep. edn.] (Conn: Greenwood Publ. 1979, 1994), viii, 204pp.
  • Victoria Glendinning, Jonathan Swift (London: Hutchinson 1998), xii,324pp., ill. [8]pp. of pls.; Do. [rep.] (London: Vintage 1999), 336pp.; Do., as Jonathan Swift: A Portrait [1st US edn.] (NY: Henry Holt 1999), xii, 324pp. [ill.];
  • Keith Crook, A Preface to Swift (London: Longman 1998), 256pp.
 
Modern biographies
  • Irvin Ehrenpreis, The Personality of Jonathan Swift (Harvard UP; London: Methuen 1958), 158pp., and Do. [rep. edn.] (NY: Barnes & Noble: London: Methuen 1969), 158pp.
  • Kathleen Williams, Jonathan Swift and the Age of Compromise (Lawrence: Kansas UP 1958; London: Constable 1959), 9+238pp, 4 pls.
  • Denis Johnston, In Search of Swift (Dublin: Allen Figgis 1959), xii,240p., ill. [14pp. of pls.; 1 folded], 26 cm.
  • Irwin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works and the Age, 3 vols. (Harvard UP 1962-83).
  • Nigel Dennis, Jonathan Swift: A Short Character (NY: Macmillan; London: Weidenfeld & `Nicolson 1964).]
  • Denis Johnston, ‘Swift of Dublin,’ in Éire-Ireland, 3, 3 (Autumn 1968), pp.38-50.
  • Michael Foot, The Pen and the Sword ([1968]).
  • Kathleen Williams, Jonathan Swift [Profiles in Literature Ser.] (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1968), viii, 111pp. [extract].
  • Denis Donoghue, Jonathan Swift: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge UP 1969), viii, 235pp.
  • Kathleen Williams, ed., Swift: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge 1970; rep. 1995), ix, 348pp.
  • Carole Fabricant, Swift’s Landscape (John Hopkins UP 1982; rep. University of Notre Dame Press 1995), 336pp.
  • Bernard Tucker, Jonathan Swift (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1983).
  • J[ames] A[lan] Downie, Jonathan Swift, Political Writer (London: Routledge Kegan Paul 1984), xv, 391pp.
  • David Nokes, Jonathan Swift, A Hypocrite Reversed: a Critical Biography (Oxford: OUP 1985) [var. The Hypocrite ... &c.].
  • Paul [var. Patrick] Reilly, Jonathan Swift: The Brave Desponder (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP 1982; Manchester UP 1982).
  • Joseph McMinn, Jonathan Swift, A Literary Life (Dublin:Gill & Macmillan; London: Macmillan 1991).
  • Robert Mahony, Jonathan Swift: The Irish Identity (Yale UP 1995), 222pp.
  • Clarissa Aykroyd, Savage Satire: The Story of Jonathan Swift (NC: Morgan Reynolds 2006), 160pp.
  • Brean Hammond, Jonathan Swift (Dublin: IAP 2009), 214pp.
  • [...]
  • Thomas Lockwood, The life of Jonathan Swift [Wiley Blackwell Critical Biographies] (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell 2023), 480pp. [SEE contents].
Specialist studies

[Note: The distinction between full biography and specialist studies operating here is essentially arbitrary as belonging to editorial convenience rather than critical judgement.]

  • C. H. Firth, The Political Significance of Gulliver’s Travels (OUP 1919).
  • Alexander M. Freeman, ed., Vanessa and Her Correspondence with Jonathan Swift (1921).
  • F. R. Leavis, ‘The Irony of Swift’, in Scrutiny, 2, 4 (March 1934), pp.364-78; rep. in The Common Pursuit (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1962), pp.73-87; also in Ernest Tuveson, ed., Swift: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1964), pp.15-29.
  • Shane Leslie, The Script of Jonathan Swift and Other Essays [Rosenbach Bibliography Fellowship, 4] (London: OUP; Pennsylvania UP 1935), 97pp.
  • Richard Foster Jones, Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Background of The Battle of the Books (St. Louis 1936; rev. edn. 1961).
  • Maxwell B. Gold, Swift’s Marriage to Stella (Harvard UP 1937).
  • Robert J. Allen, ‘Swift’s Earliest Political Tract and Sir William Temple’s Essays’, in Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, 19 (1937), pp.3-12.
  • Robert Wyse Jackson, Jonathan Swift: Dean and Pastor (London: SPCK; NY: Macmillan 1939), x, 185pp.
  • Herman Teerink, A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of Jonathan Swift (The Hague: M. Nijhoff 1937), xi, 434pp.; [315 copies; 1,574 items [revised ed. 1963].
  • Maynard Mack, ‘The First Printing of the Letters of Pope and Swift’ in Library 19 (1939), pp.45-85.
  • John F. Ross, Swift and Defoe: A Study in Relationship (California UP 1941).
  • Donald M. Berwick, The Reputation of Jonathan Swift, 1781-1882 (Philadelphia 1941).
  • Denis Johnston, ‘The Mysterious Origin of Dean Swift’, in Dublin Historical Record, III, 4 (June-Aug. 1941), pp.81-97 [extract].
  • Herbert Davis, Stella: A Gentlewoman of the Eighteenth Century (1942).
  • David Frederick Ruddell Wilson, Dean Swift [RDS lecture Nov. 1941] (Church of Ireland Printing Co. [1941]) 27pp.
  • Ricardo Quintana, Situational Satire: A Commentary on the Method of Swift (Tronoto UP 1948).
  • M. J. Craig, ed., The Legacy of Swift: A Bi-centenary Record of St. Patrick’s Hospital, Dublin (For the Governors at the Sign of the Three Candles 1948), xii, 70pp., ill.
  • Evelyn Hardy, The Conjured Spirit: A Study in the Relationship of Swift, Stella and Vanessa (London: Hogarth Press 1949), 266pp. Do. [facs. rep.] (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press [1973]), xii, 269pp. [Bibl. pp.257-26].
  • Maurice Johnson, The Sin of Wit: Jonathan Swift as a Poet (Syracuse UP 1950).
  • Kathleen Williams, ‘Gulliver’s Voyage to the Houyhnhnms’, in A Journal of English Literary History 18 (Dec. 1951), pp.275-86.
  • Harold Williams, The Text of Gulliver’s Travels (Cambridge UP 1952).
  • Martin Price, Swift’s Rhetorical Art: A Study in Structure and Meaning (Yale UP 1953).
  • Louis A. Landa, Swift and the Church of Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon 1954), xvi, 206pp.
  • Phyllis Greenacre, Swift and Carroll: A Psychoanalytic Study of Two Lives (NY 1955).
  • John H. Sutherland, ‘A Reconsideration of Gulliver’s Third Voyage’, in Studies in Philology, 54 (Jan.1957), pp.45-52.
  • Norman O. Brown, ‘The Excremental Vision’, in Life against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (Wesleyan UP; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1959), pp.179-201; and Do., rep. in Robert A. Greenberg & William Bowman Piper, eds., The Writings of Jonathan Swift (NY: Norton 1973), pp.611-30.
  • Ronald Paulson, Theme and Structure in Swift’s ‘Tale of a Tub’ (New Haven: Yale UP 1960).
  • O’Hehir, Brendan, ‘Meaning in Swift’s “Description of a City Shower’’’, in A Journal of English Literary History, 27 (Sept. 1960), pp.194-207.
  • Charles Beaumont, Swift’s Classical Rhetoric (Georgia UP 1961).
  • J. M. Bullitt, Jonathan Swift and the Anatomy of Satire (Harvard UP 1961).
  • Phillip Harth, Swift and Augustan Rationalism: The Religious Background of the Tale of A Tub (Yale UP 1961).
  • B. A. Goldgar, The Curse of Party: Swift’s Relations with Addison and Steele (Lincoln, Nebraska, Nebraska UP 1961).
  • A. Norman Jeffares, ed., A Review of English Literature, “A Swift Number”, III, 3 (London: Longmans 1962) [incls. ‘Swift and the Gaelic Tradition; ‘Swift’s Satirical Elegy on a Late Famous General’, ‘Alector’s Whip’, ‘The Meaning of Gulliver’s Last Voyage’, and ‘Swift’s Personalty and Death Masks’ (ill.)].
  • Irwin Ehrenpreis, ‘The Meaning of Gulliver’s Last Voyage’, in A Review of English Literature 3 (July 1962), pp.18-38.
  • J. C. Andreasen, ‘Swift’s Satire on the Occult in A Tale of a Tub’, in Texas Studies in Literature and Language 5 (Autumn 1963), pp.410-21.
  • Sybil le Brocquy, Cadenus: a Resassessment in the Light of New Evidence of the Relationships between Swift, Stella, and Vanessa (Dublin: Dolmen 1962), 160pp. [extract].
  • Oliver Ferguson, Jonathan Swift and Ireland (Urbana: Illinois UP 1962), viii, 217pp.
  • Edward W. Rosenheim, Swift and the Satirist’s Art (Chicago UP 1963), ix, 243pp.
  • Arthur H. Scouten, A Bibliography of the Writings of Jonathan Swift, D.D. [2nd rev. & corr. edn.] (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press [1963]; rep. 2002), xviii, 453pp.
  • Herbert Davis, Jonathan Swift, Essays on His Satire and Other Studies (OUP 1964).
  • Ernest Tuveson, ed., Swift: A Collecton of Critical Essays (N.J.: Prentice-Hall 1964) [contribs. Richard Quintana, et al.].
  • Robert Hunting, Jonathan Swift (Boston: Twayne Publishers 1967), 149pp., and Do. [rev. edn.] (Twayne 1987), 152pp.
  • Hopkins, Robert H., ‘The Personation of Hobbism in Swift’s Tale of a Tub and Mechanical Operation of the Spirit’, in Philological Quarterly 45 (April 1966), pp.372-78.
  • Roger McHugh & Philip Edwards, eds., A Collection of Essays: A Centenary Tribute (Dublin: Dolmen 1967).
  • J. K. Walton, ‘The Unity of the Travels’, in Hermethena, CIV (1967), pp.5-50.
  • Richard Cook, Jonathan Swift as Tory Pamphleteer (Seattle: Washington UP 1967).
  • Donald Greene, ‘On Swift’s “Scatological” Poems’, in Sewanee Review 75 (Autumn 1967), pp.672-89.
  • A. Norman Jeffares, ed., Fair Liberty Was all His Cry: A Tercentenary Tribute to Jonathan Swift 1677-1745 (London: Macmillan 1967) [incl. Mackie L. Jarrell, ‘“Jack and the Dane”: Swift Traditions in Ireland’, pp.311-41; Vivian Mercier, ‘Swift and the Gaelic Tradition’, c.p.284].
  • Bruce Arnold, et al., eds., The Dublin Magazine, ‘Swift Tercentenary Edition’ (Autumn-Winter 1967) [incl. Padraic Colum, ‘Swift’s Poetry’; Anselm Schlösser, ‘Gulliver in Houhyhynmland’, T. G. Wilson, ‘Prince of Journalists’, and reviews by Robert Jackson Wyse of Jeffares, ed., Fair Liberty was all His Cry, and Sybil le Brocquy, A View on Vanessa, and Stella’s Birthdays].
  • W. B. Carnochan, Lemuel Gulliver’s Mirror for Man (Berkeley: University of California Press 1968).
  • Roger McHugh, & Philip Edwards, eds., Jonathan Swift 1667-1967 (Chester Springs, PA 1968).
  • Brian Vickers, coll. & ed., The World of Jonathan Swift: Essays for the Tercentenary (Oxford: Basil Blackwell; Harvard UP 1968), vi, 273pp.
  • Frank Brady, ed., Twentieth Century Interpretations of Gulliver’s Travels. (N.J.: Prentice-Hall 1968).
  • John R. Clark, Form and Frenzy in Swift’s “Tale of a Tub” (London: Cornell UP 1970).
  • Robert W. Uphaus, ‘Swift’s Stella Poems and Fidelity to Experience’, in Éire-Ireland, 5, 3 (Autumn 1970), pp.40-52.
  • Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., ‘Swift’s Friend: Dr. Patrick Delany’, in Éire-Ireland, 5, 3 (Autumn 1970), pp.53-62.
  • Martin Kallich, The Other End of the Egg: Religious Satire in “Gulliver’s Travels” (Connecticut: Conference on British Studies at the University of Bridgeport 1970).
  • A. Norman Jeffares, ed., Swift [Modern judgements] (Nashville: Aurora Publishers [1970]), 279pp. [22cm.; see contents].
  • Robert W. Uphaus, ‘Images of Swift: A Review of Some Recent Criticism’, in Éire-Ireland, 6, 3 (Autumn 1971), pp.16-22.
  • Jae Num Lee, Swift and Scatological Satire (New Mexico UP 1971), 158pp. [see extract; incls. chaps., ‘Scatology in Continental Satirical Writings from Aristophanes to Rabelais’ and ‘English Scatological Writings from Skelton to Pope’, pp.7–22; 23–53].
  • Denis Donoghue, Jonathan Swift: A Critical Anthology (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1971), 455pp. [incl. George Orwell; Arthur E. Case, ‘Personal and Political Satire in Gulliver’s Travels’, et al.].
  • Kathleen M. Swaim, A Reading of Gulliver’s Travels (The Hague: Mouton 1972).
  • Claude [Julien] Rawson, Gulliver and the Gentle Reader: Studies in Swift and Our Time (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1973), x, 190pp.
  • A. L. Rowse, Jonathan Swift (London: Thames & Hudson 1975).
  • Nora C. Jaffe, The Poet Swift (Hanover: New England UP 1977).
  • John I. Fischer, On Swift’s Poetry (Gainesville: Florida UP 1978).
  • Peter J. Schakel, Poetry of Jonathan Swift: Allusion and the Development of a Poetic Style (Winsconsin UP 1978).
  • Peter Smith, Jonathan Swift: Preacher and Jester (OUP 1978).
  • Frederik N. Smith, Language and Reality in Swift’s A Tale of a Tub Ohio State UP 1979).
  • Ricardo Quintana, Two Augustans: John Locke, Jonathan Swift ( Wisconsin UP 1978), vii, 149pp.
  • Pat Rogers, The Augustan Vision (London: Methuen 1978), 318pp.
  • F. P. Lock, The Politics of Gulliver’s Travels (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1980).
  • Pat Rogers, Hacks and Dunces: Pope, Swift and Grub Street [abridged edn.] (London: Methuen 1980), xvi, 239pp.
  • A. B. England, Energy and Order in the Poetry of Swift (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP 1980).
  • Louis A. Landa, ‘Jonathan Swift and Charity’, in Eighteenth-Century English Literature (Princeton 1980), [56ff.].
  • Frances D. Louis, Swift’s Anatomy of Misunderstanding (NJ: Barnes & Noble Books 1981), 193pp.
  • Louise K. Barnett, Swift’s Poetic Worlds (Newark: Delaware UP 1981).
  • A. C. Elias Jr., Swift at Moor Park (Philadelphia 1982).
  • Claude J[ulien] Rawson, The Character of Swift’s Satire: A Revised Focus (London 1983).
  • Edward Said, ‘Swift’s Tory Anarchy’, and ‘Swift as Intellectual’, in The World, The Text and the Critic (Cambridge UP 1983), pp.54-71; 2-89.
  • Everett Zimmerman, Swift’s Narrative Satires: Author and Authority (Ithaca: Cornell UP 1983).
  • F. P. Lock, Swift’s Tory Politics (Newark: Delaware UP 1983).
  • Ellen Pollak, The Poetics of Sexual Muth: Gender and Ideology in the Verse of Swift and Pope (Chicago UP 1985).
  • Claude Rawson, Order from Confusion Sprung: Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature from Swift to Cowper (London: George Allen & Unwin 1985), xv, 431pp.
  • Hurtley, Jacqueline, ‘Thomas More and Jonathan Swift: The Utopia as Satire’, in Anuario de Filología, 11 (Universidad de Barcelona 1985), pp.393-99.
  • Harold Bloom, ed., Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels [Modern Critical Interpretations] (NY : Chelsea House 1986).
  • Charles Peake, Jonathan Swift and the Art of Raillery [...] together with notes on Irish writers associated with Swift [lecture given at the Princess Grace Irish Library, Wed. 15 Oct. 1986 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1986), [40]pp.
  • Clive T. Probyn, Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels [Penguin Critical Studies] (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1987).
  • Joseph McMinn, ‘A Weary Patriot: Swift and Anglo-Irish Identity’, in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 2 (Dublin 1987), [q.pp.].
  • Ann Cline Kelly, Swift and the English Language Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP 1988).
  • Deborah Baker Wyrick, Jonathan Swift and the Vested Word (Chapel Hill: North Carolina UP 1988).
  • James A[ldrich] W[yman] Rembert, Swift and the Dialectical Tradition (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1988), xiii, 266pp.
  • Brean Hammond, Gulliver’s Travels [Guides to Literature] (Milton Keynes: Open University Press [1988]), xii, 129pp., ill [1p. of pls.].
  • Claude Rawson [with Jenny Mezciems], ed., Pope, Swift, and Their Circle [Yearbook of English studies, V, 18] London: MHRA 1988), ix, 366pp.
  • John Irwin Fischer, Hermann Real & James D. Woolley, eds., Swift and His Contexts (NY: AMS 1989) [essays by C. P. Daw, et al.].
  • Brian Tippett, Gulliver’s Travels [The Critics Debate] (N.J.: Humanities 1989).
  • Frederik N. Smith, ed., The Genres of Gulliver’s Travels (Newark: Delaware UP 1990).
  • [q. auth.] ‘“Savage Indignation”: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language and Semiotics in Jonathan Swift’, in Swift Studies (Wilhem Fink Verlag 1990), pp.11-37.
  • Daniel Eilon, Factions’ Fictions: Ideological Closure in Swift’s Satire (Newark: Delaware UP 1990).
  • Richard Nash, ‘Entrapment and Ironic Modes in Tale of a Tub’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 24, 4 (1991), pp.414-31.
  • Joseph M. Levine, The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan Age (Ithaca: Cornell UP 1991).
  • Carole Fabricant, ‘The Battle of the Ancients and Post Moderns: Rethinking Swift Through Contemporary Perspectives’, in The Eighteenth Century, 32, 3 (1991), pp.256-73.
  • Edward W. Said, ‘Swift’s Tory Anarchy’ and ‘Swift as Intellectual’, in The World, the Text, and the Critic [1983] (London: Vintage (1991), pp.54-72.
  • Joseph McMinn, ‘“A Weary Patriot: Swift and the Formation of an Anglo-Irish Identity&£146;, in Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an dá chultúr, 2 (1987), pp.103-13.
  • Joseph McMinn, ‘Jonathan’s Travels: Swift’s Sense of Ireland’, in Swift Studies, 7 (1992), [cp.42].
  • Jean-Paul Forster, Jonathan Swift: The Fictions of the Satirist [Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe XIV, Angelsächsische Sprache und Literatur, Vol. 220] (Berne: Peter Lang 1991; NY: Peter Lange 1992); rev. edn. (Berne & NY: Peter Lang 1998), 258pp.
  • Thomas Bartlett, The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1992).
  • Kenneth Craven, Jonathan Swift and the Millennium of Madness: The Information Age in Swift’s ‘A Tale of a Tub’ (NY: E. J. Brill 1992).
  • Camille R. La Bossière, ‘“Upon Sleeping in Church”: Swift’s Sermons and the Ethics of Wit’, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 19, 1 (July 1993), pp.1-21.
  • S[ean] J. Connolly, Religion, Law and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland 1600-1760 (Oxford: OUP 1992).
  • Frank Palmeri, Critical Essays on Jonathan Swift (NY: G. K. hall & Co. 1993).
  • Richard H. Rodino & Hermann Real, eds., Reading Swift: Papers from the Second Munster Symposium on Jonathan Swift (Munich: Wilhelm Fink 1993).
  • Joseph McMinn, Jonathan’s Travels, Swift and Ireland, with a Foreword by Michael Foot(Belfast: Appletree 1994), 160pp.
  • Marilyn Francus, The Converting Imagination: Linguistic Theory and Swift’s Satiric Prose (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP 1994).
  • Ian Higgins, Swift’s Politics: A Study in Disaffection [Cambridge Studies in 18th-century English Literature & Thought, No. 20] (Cambridge UP 1994).
  • Christopher Fox, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift [Case Studies in Contemp. Criticism ser.] (Boston: St. Martin’s Press; London: Macmillan 1995), 416pp. [contribs. incl. Carol Barash, Terry Castle, Michael Conlon, Carole Fabricant, Felicity Nussbaum, with comp. text & crit. essays].
  • Christopher Fox & Brenda Tooley, eds., Walking Naboth’s Vineyard [Ward Phillips Lect. Ser./Notre Dame Sesquicentennial Irish Meetings] (Notre Dame UP 1995), 224pp. [sel. of nine papers, chiefly emphasising Irish contexts, incl. essays by Seamus Deane [‘Swift: Virtue, Travel and Enlightenment’, pp.17-39], Michael DePorte, Margaret Anne Doody, A. C. Elias, Carole Fabricant, Joseph McMinn, Robert Mahony, Heinz J. Vienken, and James Woolley].
  • Robert Mahony, ‘Jonathan Swift as the “Patriot Dean”’, in History Ireland (Winter 1995), pp.23-27.
  • Robert Phiddian, Swift’s Parody (Cambridge UP 1995), 221pp.
  • Alan D. Chalmers, Jonathan Swift and the Burden of the Future (Assoc. UP 1995), 175pp.
  • Ronald Knowles, Gulliver’s Travels: The Politics of Satire (Hemel Hempstead: Prentice-Hall 1996), 169pp.
  • Donald Mell, ed., Pope, Swift and Women Writers (Assoc. UP 1996), 252pp.
  • Patrick Kelly, Aileen Douglas & Ian Campbell Ross, eds., Locating Swift: Essays from Dublin on the 250th Anniversary of the Death of Jonathan Swift 1667-1745 (Dublin: Four Courts Press 1998), 208pp. [incls. keynote contribs. by S. J. Connolly, Margaret Anne Doody & Carole Fabricant and contribs. from Mark Blackwell, Melinda Rabb, et. al].
  • Real, Hermann, & Helgard Stöver-Leidig, eds., Reading Swift: Papers of from the Third Münster Symposium (Munich: Wilhelm Fink 1998), 367pp.
  • Arnold, Bruce, Swift: An Illustrated Life (Dublin: Lilliput Press 1999), 128pp.
  • Margot Gayle Backus, ‘“Something valuable of their own”: Children, Reproduction, and Irony in Swift, Burke, and Edgeworth’, in The Gothic Family Romance: Heterosexuality, Child Sacrifice and the Anglo-Irish Colonial Order (London: Duke UP 1999), [q.pp.].
  • S. J. Connolly, ed., Political Thought in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2000), q.pp. [incls. Robert Mahony, ‘Protestant Dependence and Consumption in Swift’s Irish Writings’, pp.83-104).
  • Declan Kiberd, in Irish Classics (London: Granta 2000), ‘Jonathan Swift: a Colonial Outsider?’, pp.55-70, & ‘Home and Away: Gulliver’s Travels’, pp.71-85.
  • Christopher Fauske, Jonathan Swift and the Church of Ireland 1710-24 (Dublin: IAP 2000), 296pp.
  • Claude Rawson, God, Gulliver and Genocide: Barbarism and the European Imagination, 1492-1945 (Oxford: OUP 2001), xvi, 401pp. [16pp. pls; reviewed by Terry Eagleton in LRB, (23 Aug. 2001), pp.19-20 - available online].
  • Ann Cline Kelly, Jonathan Swift and Popular Culture: Myth, Media and Man (London: Palgrave 2002), 256pp.
  • Christopher Fox, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Swift (Cambridge UP 2003), 283pp. [pbk.].
  • James Ward, ‘Reading Swift and Ireland, 1720-1729: Constituencies, Contexts and Constructions of Identity in Jonathan Swift’s Occasional Writings of the 1720s’ [PhD] (Leeds Univ. 2004) [see abstract infra; available as pdf - online].
  • Sabine Baltes, The Pamphlet Controversy about Wood’s Halfpence (1722-25) and the Tradition of Irish Constitutional Nationalism (Franfurt: Peter Lang 2003), xviii, 355pp.
  • Kevin Barry, ‘Exclusion and Inclusion in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels’, in The Irish Review, 30, 1 [Nov.] (Spring-Summer 2003), pp.36-47.
  • Seamus Deane, Foreign Affections: Essays on Edmund Burke (Cork UP/Notre Dame UP 2005) 300pp. [incls. ‘Swift and Deane: Territories of the Heart’, pp.11-27].
  • Hermann J. Real, ed., The Reception of Jonathan Swift in Europe [The Reception of British & Irish Authors in Europe] (London: Continuum 2005), 416pp. [see contents].
  • Louise Barnett, Jonathan Swift in the Company of Women (Oxford: OUP 2007), xi, 225pp., ill. [Love dramas; Stella: “A conjugall love without any conjugall act”; Vanessa: the Questions; After Stella: the Constant Seraglio; Maternity; The question of Misogyny; Swift and Women Critics.]
  • Hermann J. Real, ed., Reading Swift: Papers from The Fifth Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift (Brill 2008), 571pp. [see contents].
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Orrery’s Remarks (1752) - editions of the original and responses to same:
Original
  • Lord Orrery [John Boyle, 5th Earl of Cork and Orrery], Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin (1752) [see quotations, infra].
  • Remarks on the life and writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, in a series of letters from John Earl of Orrery to his son, the Honourable Hamilton Boyle (London: Printed for A. Millar 1752; &. num. edns.), 240pp. port. [Swift after Benjamin Wilson], and Do. [another edn.] (George Faulkner 1752), 204pp.; Do., [5th, corrected edn.] (Dublin: George Faulkner 1757), pls., port. [6], 339, [13]ppp.;
Related
  • A Candid Appeal from the late Dean Swift to the Right Hon. the Earl of O-y [i.e. Orrery] (1752), verse;
  • [Richard Edgcumbe,] An Epistle from the Hon. R- E- to his dear Nanny [Day], to which is added, A Satire on L-d O-y’s Remarks on the life and writings of Dean S-ft [By C. Jones; with MS. notes by Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford] (1752), verse;
  • Letter II: from a Gentleman in the Country to his Son in the College of Dublin, relating to the memoirs of the life and writings of Doctor Swift Dean of St. Patrick’s. Ascribed to the Right Honourable the Earl of Orrery (Dublin: printed by Oliver Nelson 1752), 27-52pp., 8o.;
  • [Richard Moseley,] A Letter to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Clogher [Robert Clayton], in Ireland, occasioned by his Lordship’s Essay on Spirit, to which is added, a letter to the Right Honourable John Earl of Orrery, occasioned by the character which his Lordship gives of Dean Swift’s Sermon on the Trinity, in his remarks on the life and writings of the Dean (London: J. Noon 1752), 59pp.
  • “J. R.” [Patrick Delany], Observations upon Lord Orrery’s Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift containing several singular anecdotes relating to the character and conduct of that great Genius and […] Stella […] to which are added Two original pieces of the same author never before publish’d. - viz., A Treatise on good manners and good breeding: Verses to a friend who has been abused in many libels] (London 1754).
  • Deane Swift, An Essay upon the life, writings, and character of Dr. Jonathan Swift. Interspersed with some […] animadversions upon the remarks of a late critical author [the Earl of Orrery], and upon the observations of an anonymous writer signing himself J. R. on those Remarks […] to which is added, that sketch of Dr. Swift’s life, written by the Doctor himself, which was lately presented by the author of this essay to the University of Dublin (London 1755), 8o.[by f. of Theophilus Swift.]
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Bibliographical Details

M. J. Craig, ed., The Legacy of Swift: a bi-centenary record of St. Patrick’s Hospital, Dublin (For the Governors at the Sign of the Three Candles 1948), xii, 70pp., ill. [pls., ports. & plan]. 25cm.; Contents: C. A. Maguire, Foreword; J. N. P. Moore, The Hospital in the 20th c.; R. W. Jackson, The vision of Jonathan Swift; M. J. Craig, Swift’s heirs; J. D. H. Widdess, St. Patrick’s Hospital, 1746-1899; M. J. Craig, The buildings; J. D. H. Widdess [comp.], Officers of St. Patrick’s Hospital, 1746-1948 M. J. Craig [comp.], Short catalogue of the exhibition held in the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland in connexion with the bi-centenary and the Dublin meeting of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association, May 1948.

A. Norman Jeffares, Swift [Modern Judgements] (Nashville: Aurora Publishers [1970]), 279pp. [22cm.]. CONTENTS: Jeffares, Introduction; B. Dobrée, The jocose dean; J. J. Hogan, Bicentenary of Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745; I. Ehrenpreis, Swift on liberty; L. I. Landa, Swift’s economic views and mercantilism; J. W. Johnson, Swift’s historical outlook; F. R. Leavis, The irony of Swift; A. L. Rowse, Swift as poet; H. Davis, Literary satire in A tale of a tub; V. Woolf, Swift’s Journal to Stella; W. B. Ewald, Jr., M. B., drapier; G. Orwell, Politics vs. literature; M. Nicolson and N. Mohler, The scientific background of Voyage to Laputa; K. M.Williams, Gulliver’s voyage to the Houyhnhnms; W. E. Yeomans, The Houyhnhnm as Menippean horse; Bibliography (pp.[267]-69). bibliographical references and index.

Hermann J. Real, ed., The Reception of Jonathan Swift in Europe [The Reception of British & Irish Authors in Europe] (London: Continuum 2005), xxxii, 378pp. CONTENTS: Wilhelm Graeber, His Impact on Eighteenth Century [5]; Flavio Gregori, The Italian Reception of Swift [17]; José Luis Chamosa González, Swifts Horses in the Land of the Cabelleros [57]; Jorge Bastos da Silva, Swift to Portuguese Taste [79]; Astride Krake, Hermann J. Reall, & Marie-Luise Spieckmann, The Dean’s Voyages into Germany [93]; Nils Hartman, Swiftian Presence in Scandanavia: Denmark Norway Sweden [142]; Michael Düring, Notes on the Polish Reception [156]; Michael Düring, The Dean’s Fate in Russia [170]; Michael Düring, Detecting Swift in the Czech Lands [214]; Gabriella Hartvig, The Dean in Hungary [224]; 11 Filipina Filipova, Swift’s Impact in Bulgaria [238] Mihaela Mudure, Swift’s Romanian Adventures [248]; Sabine Baltes, Swiftian Material Culture [273]; Bibliography [284]. See full text at Google Books, online.

Thomas Lockwood, The Life of Jonathan Swift [Wiley Blackwell Critical Biographies] (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell 2023), 480pp. CONTENTS:. Chap. 1: Brought over to Ireland in a Band-Box 1667–1689. Chap. 2: Moor Park 1689–1692. Chap. 3: Into the Church, Without Being Driven 1692–1698. Chap. 4: Laracor and London 1698–1704. Chap. 5: A Tale of a Tub 1704. Chap. 6: Arguments about Christianity 1704–1709. Chap. 7: Writing for Power 1709–1712. Chap. 8: The Life of a Spider 1711–1712. Chap. 9: Journal to Stella 1710–1713. Chap. 10: Preferment, Barely 1712–1714. Chap. 11: But Why Obscurely Here Alone? 1713–1714. Chap. 12: Living Out of the World 1714–1718. Chap. 13: Second Wind 1719–1723. Chap. 14: Mr. Drapier 1723–1725. Chap. 15: Several Remote Nations 1721–1726. Chap. 16: Poor Floating Isle 1726–1729. Chap. 17: Market Hill. Chap. 18: A Kind of Knack at Rhyme 1730–1733. Chap. 19: We Are All Slaves and Knaves and Fools 1732–1735. Chap. 20: Drawing Room and Back Stairs 1735–1736. Chap. 21: Silence 1737–1745.

Collections & Symposia

Paul Hyland & Neil Sammells, eds., Irish Writing [Bath College of Higher Ed.] (London: Macmillan 1991), incls. Paul Hyland, ‘Naming Names, Steele and Swift’, pp.13-31; Robert Phiddian, ‘The English Swift/The Irish Swift’, pp.32-44; Bryan Coleborne, ‘“They Sate in Counterview”, Anglo-Irish Verse in the Eighteenth Century’, pp.45-63.

H. J. Real & H. J. Vienkens, eds., Proceedings of the First Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift (Munich: Wilhelm Fink 1985), incls. C. T. Probyn, ‘“Haranguing upon Texts”: Swift and the Idea of the Book’, pp.187-97; Wolfgang Zach, ‘Jonathan Swift and Colonialism’ [q.pp.].

Hermann J. Real, ed., Reading Swift: Papers from The Fifth Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift (Brill 2008), 571pp. CONTENTS - Prelims [1-10]; Herman Real, Preface [11-13]; A. C. Elias Jr, ‘Reforming Mankind: Lemuel Gulliver, Constantia Grierson, and the Limits of Source Studies’ [15-28]; Melinda Alliker Rabb, ‘Postmodernizing Swift’ [29-43]; W. B. Carnochan, ‘Who Was Podefar? Swift in the Journal to Stella’ [45-54]; João Fróes, ‘Contemporary Writings in Answer to Orrery’s Remarks on Swift’ [55-65]; James E. May, ‘Revising Teerink: A Critique with Notes towards a Revised Descriptive Bibliography of Swift’ [67-98]; Stephen Karian, ‘Edmund Curll and the Circulation of Swift’sWritings’ [99-129]; James McLaverty, ‘The Failure of the Swift-Pope Miscellanies (1727-32) and The Life and Genuine Character of Doctor Swift (1733)’ [131-48]; Marcus Walsh, ‘Telling Tales and Gathering Fragments: Swift’s Tale of a Tub’ [149-63]; Allan Ingram, ‘Madness at Tub Time: Swift Writing Insanity’ [165-73]; Frank T. Boyle, ‘New Science in the Composition of A Tale of a Tub’ [175-84]; S. J. Connolly, ‘Swift and History’ [185-202]; Ian Higgins, ‘An Argument against Abolishing Christianity and its Contexts’ [203-23]; Howard D. Weinbrot, ‘Swift’s Thirtieth of January Sermon: Politics, the Pulpit, and the Choice of Strife’ [225-44]; Toby Barnard, ‘John Lyon and Irish Antiquarianism in the Time of Swift’ [245-54]; Valerie Rumbold, ‘Locating Swift’s Parody: The Title of Polite Conversation’ [255-72]; Clive T. Probyn, ‘Swift’s Early Odes: The Unreadable in Search of the Unspeakable’ [273-86]; John Irwin Fischer, ‘“In pity to the empty’ng Town”: Who’s Who, Where’s What? And Who’s the Poet?’ [287-307]; James Woolley, ‘Swift’s “Skinnibonia”: A New Poem from Lady Acheson’s Manuscript’ [309-42]; Authors: Dirk F. Passmann and Hermann J. Real, ‘The Intellectual History of “Self-Love” and Verses on the Death of Dr Swift’ [343-62]; Joseph McMinn, ‘The Prosecution of Power: Swift’s Defence of Ireland’ [363-373]; Sabine Baltes, ‘Anything But Human: Gods, Beasts, and Demons in Swift’s Poems on William Wood’ [375-91]; Sean Moore, ‘Swift and Ireland’s Revenue: The Public-Finance Context of Irish Economic Pamphleteering’ [393-403]; Clement Hawes, ‘Scaling Greatness in Gulliver’s Travels’ [405-27]; Serge Soupel, ‘Gulliver, Metamorphosis, Gods, Demigods, and Heroes’ [429-440]; Ann Cline Kelly, ‘Swift’s Unmoralized Ovid: Baucis and Philemon and Book Four of Gulliver’s Travels’ [441-51]; J. A. Downie, ‘Gulliver’s Fourth Voyage and Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding’ [453-464]; Peter Sabor, ‘“Some Private Edition of his Works”: Frances Burney and Swift’ [465-82]; Sabine Wendel, ‘Sybil Le Brocquy’s A View on Vanessa: An Exercise in Historiographical Meta-Drama’ [483-90]; Flavio Gregori, ‘“Inverted Sublime”: Humorism in the Nineteenth-Century Italian Reception of Swift and Sterne’ [491-518]; Gabriella Hartvig, ‘Hungarian Gulliveriads: Gulliver’s Travels in Faremidó, Capillária, and Kazohinia’ [519-531]; Michael Düring, ‘On Swift in his Madhouse and Pregnant Queens: The Creative Reception of Dean Swift in (Soviet-)Russian Plays and Narrative Prose’ [533-548]; Contributors’ [549-554]; Index.

The Irish Times Commemorative Supplement: ‘Swift’ (30th Nov. 1967), Special Irish Times Supplement (6d.): Mario Praz, ‘The Dean Through Italian Eyes’; Denis Johnston, ‘Jonathan Swift’; Terence de Vere White, ‘Jonathan What?’ [counters Sybil le Brocquy’s ‘passionate plea’ on behalf in Cadenus]; T. G. Watson, ‘The Nature of his Illness’; Arland Ussher, ‘Of Swift’ [orig. on Radio Éireann]; Sybil le Brocquy, ‘Why Swift did not marry Esther Johnston’; Hubert Butler, ‘The End of Satire’; M.J. C. Hodgart, ‘Gulliver, Horses and Gentry’; Dr Robert Wyse-Jackson, ‘The Places that Hold Memories’.

St. Patrick’s Deanery (Dublin) is host to “Dean Swift: A Satirist and His Faith”, a symposium on Jonathan Swift and Christianity conducted at The Deanery of St. Patrick’s, Upper Kevin Street, Dublin 8, on 19 October 2002. Robert Mahony (Catholic U. of America), in the chair, also gave the Commemorative Address at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Sunday 20th. The other guest-speakers were Anne Barbeau Gardiner (NY CU); Ruth A. Herman (Hertfordshire U); W. J. McCormack (Goldsmiths’ Coll., UL) and Brean S.Hammond (Nottingham U.) Lectures and addresses given on the occasion are published on the Techne website’s “Swift Page” [online].


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