Winner, 2010 Donald Murphy Prize for a Distinguished First Book, American Conference on Irish Studies Renowned as one of the most brilliant satirists ever, Jonathan Swift has long fascinated Hibernophiles beyond the shores of the Emerald Isle. Sean Moore's examination of Swift's writings and the economics behind the distribution of his work elucidates the humorist's crucial role in developing a renewed sense of nationalism among the Irish during the eighteenth century. Taking Swift's Irish satires, such as A Modest Proposal and the Drapier's Letters, as examples of anticolonial discourse, Moore unpacks the author's carefully considered published words and his deliberate drive to liberate the Dublin publishing industry from England's shadow to argue that the writer was doing nothing less than creating a national print media. He points to the actions of Anglo-Irish colonial subjects at the outset of Britain's financial revolution; inspired by Swift's dream of a sovereign Ireland, these men and women harnessed the printing press to disseminate ideas of cultural autonomy and defend the country's economic rights. Doing so, Moore contends, imbued the island with a sense of Irishness that led to a feeling of independence from England and ultimately gave the Irish a surprising degree of financial autonomy. Applying postcolonial, new economic, and book history approaches to eighteenth-century studies, Swift, the Book, and the Irish Financial Revolution effectively links the era's critiques of empire to the financial and legal motives for decolonization. Scholars of colonialism, postcolonialism, Irish studies, Atlantic studies, Swift, and the history of the book will find Moore's eye-opening arguments original and compelling.

This edition of Jonathan Swift's basic works contains the authoritative texts of all his most important prose writings as well as many shorter pieces, poems, and letter extracts. Included are "Gulliver's Travels, Swift's devastating picture of human nature and human foibles; "A Tale of a Tub, his scathing attack on the intellectual culture and religious excesses of his time; "The Battel of the Books, his defense of the classical tradition; and the unforgettable "Modest Proposal, in which he proposes that the Irish, in order to avoid starvation, eat their children.

A rich and riveting portrait of the man behind Gulliver’s Travels, by a “vivid, ardent, and engaging” (New York Times Book Review) author. One of Europe’s most important literary figures, Jonathan Swift was also an inspired humorist, a beloved companion, and a conscientious Anglican minister—as well as a hoaxer and a teller of tales. His anger against abuses of power would produce the most famous satires of the English language: Gulliver’s Travels as well as the Drapier Papers and the unparalleled Modest Proposal, in which he imagined the poor of Ireland farming their infants for the tables of wealthy colonists. John Stubbs’s biography captures the dirt and beauty of a world that Swift both scorned and sought to amend. It follows Swift through his many battles, for and against authority, and in his many contradictions, as a priest who sought to uphold the dogma of his church; as a man who was quite prepared to defy convention, not least in his unshakable attachment to an unmarried woman, his “Stella”; and as a writer whose vision showed that no single creed holds all the answers. Impeccably researched and beautifully told, in Jonathan Swift Stubbs has found the perfect subject for this masterfully told biography of a reluctant rebel—a voice of withering disenchantment unrivaled in English.

An account of Swift's dealings with books and texts, showing how the business of print was transformed during his lifetime.

This new volume of Reading Swift assembles 26 lectures delivered at the Seventh Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift in June 2017, testifying to an extraordinary spectrum of research interests in the Dean of St Patrick's, Dublin, and his works. Reading Swift follows the tried and tested format of its predecessors, grouping the essays in eight sections: biographical problems; bibliographical and canonical studies; political and religious as well as philosophical, economic, and social issues; poetry; Gulliver's Travels; and reception studies. The élan vital, which has been such a distinctive feature of Swift scholar-ship in the past thirty-five years, is continuing unabated.

Best known as the author of ""Gulliver's Travels"", Jonathan Swift is one of literature's great satirists. Born and educated in Ireland, Swift became a politician and clergyman in England, where he wrote essays, pamphlets, poems, and fiction that addressed the political issues and social conditions of his time. In ""Gulliver's Travels"", he introduced the allegorical settings of Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the island of the Houyhnhnms, as well as the term 'yahoos' in a playful, but dark, satirical reflection of humankind. This addition to ""Bloom's Classic Critical Views"" includes a chronology, an index, and an introductory essay by Yale University professor Harold Bloom.