Jonathan Swift : His Life and His World / Leo Damrosch.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Damrosch, Leopold, Author.

Series:

Lewis Walpole series in eighteenth-century culture and history.

The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745.

Swift, Jonathan.

Authors, Irish--18th century--Biography.

Authors, Irish.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (416 p.)

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [2013]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Jonathan Swift is best remembered today as the author of Gulliver's Travels, the satiric fantasy that quickly became a classic and has remained in print for nearly three centuries. Yet Swift also wrote many other influential works, was a major political and religious figure in his time, and became a national hero, beloved for his fierce protest against English exploitation of his native Ireland. What is really known today about the enigmatic man behind these accomplishments? Can the facts of his life be separated from the fictions? In this deeply researched biography, Leo Damrosch draws on discoveries made over the past thirty years to tell the story of Swift's life anew. Probing holes in the existing evidence, he takes seriously some daring speculations about Swift's parentage, love life, and various personal relationships and shows how Swift's public version of his life-the one accepted until recently-was deliberately misleading. Swift concealed aspects of himself and his relationships, and other people in his life helped to keep his secrets.. Assembling suggestive clues, Damrosch re-narrates the events of Swift's life while making vivid the sights, sounds, and smells of his English and Irish surroundings.Through his own words and those of a wide circle of friends, a complex Swift emerges: a restless, combative, empathetic figure, a man of biting wit and powerful mind, and a major figure in the history of world letters.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Prologue

1. Beginnings

2. A Patron and Two Mysteries

3. "Long Choosing, and Beginning Late,"

4. Moor Park Once More

5. The Village and the Castle

6. London

7. "A Very Positive Young Man,"

8. The Scandalous Tub

9. Swift and God

10. First Fruits

11. The War and the Whigs

12. Swift the Londoner

13. At The Summit

14. The Journal to Stella

15. Enter Vanessa

16. Tory Triumph

17. Tory Collapse

18. Reluctant Dubliner

19. Political Peril

20. The Irish Countryside

21. Stella

22. Vanessa in Ireland

23. National Hero

24. The Astonishing Travels

25. Gulliver in England

26. Disillusionment and Loss

27. Frustrated Patriot

28. Swift Among the Women

29. The Disgusting Poems

30. Waiting for the End

Chronology

Abbreviations

Notes

Illustration Credits

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780300165678

0300165676

OCLC:

859835070