The Basic Writings of Jonathan Swift (Modern Library Classics),Used

Product DescriptionThis edition of Jonathan Swifts 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 Gullivers Travels, Swifts 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.Review[Swift] dictated for a time the political opinions of the English nation . . . and showed that wit,confederated with truth, has such force as authority was unable to resist.Samuel JohnsonFrom the Inside Flapof Jonathan Swifts 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 Gullivers Travels, Swifts 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.From the Back Cover[Swift] dictated for a time the political opinions of the English nation . . . and showed that wit,confederated with truth, has such force as authority was unable to resist.Samuel JohnsonAbout the AuthorClaude Rawson is the Maynard Mack Professor of English at Yale University. His most recent book is God, Gulliver, and Genocide: Barbarism and the European Imagination, 14921945. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.Ian Higgins is a senior lecturer in English at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. He is the author of, most recently, Swifts Politics: A Study in Disaffection.Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.A Tale of a TubTreatises wrote by the same Author, most of them mentioned in the following Discourses; which will be speedily published. A Character of the present Set of Wits in this Island. A Panegyrical Essay upon the Number THREE. A Dissertation upon the principal Productions of Grubstreet.Lectures upon a Dissection of Human Nature. A Panegyrick upon the World. An Analytical Discourse upon Zeal, Historitheophysicallogically considered. A general History of Ears. A Modest Defence of the Proceedings of the Rabble in all Ages. A Description of the Kingdom of Absurdities. A Voyage into England, by a Person of Quality in Terra Australis incognita, translated from the Original. A Critical Essay upon the Art of Canting, Philosophically, Physically, and Musically considered.An ApologyIf good and ill Nature equally operated upon Mankind, I might have saved my self the Trouble of this Apology; for it is manifest by the Reception the following Discourse hath met with, that those who approve it, are a great Majority among the Men of Tast; yet there have been two or three Treatises written expresly against it, besides many others that have flirted at it occasionally, without one Syllable having been ever published in its Defence, or even Quotation to its Advantage, that I can remember, except by the Polite Author of a late Discourse between a Deist and a Socinian.Therefore, since the Book seems calculated to live at least as long as our Language, and our Tast admit no great Alterations, I am content to convey some Apology along with it.The greatest Part of that Book was finished above thirteen Years since, 1969, which is eight Years before it was published. The Author was then young, his Invention at the Height, and his Reading fresh in his Head. By the Assistance of some Thinking, and much Conversation, he had endeavourd to Strip himself of as many real Prejudices as he could;