The purpose of this volume is to make as accessible as possible to the modern reader the best and most characteristic writings of Jonathan Swift. It contains his essential masterpieces, Gulliver's Travels and A Tale of a Tub, and a wide selection of his other work in prose and poetry. By including a number of the impressive if unpleasant poems Swift wrote after 1729, poems traditionally excluded from collections of his writings, it offers the reader a more substantial and, we believe, more accurate representation of Swift's achievement from virtually the beginning of his career to the end.

This volume contains the complete and definitive texts of virtually all of Swift's major works, as well as a generous selection of his poetry and other writings. Included are Gulliver's Travels, A Tale of a Tub, The Battel of the Books, A Discourse Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, numerous essays and other prose pieces, and poems, among them several that are rarely reprinted. All of the texts are scrupulously edited and annotated.

A wide range of background materials is presented, including correspondence between Swift and members of his circle and observations by his contemporaries. The critical essays offer evaluations by Norman O. Brown, Samuel Holt Monk, Allan Bloom, Nigel Dennis, Edward W. Rosenheim, Jr., A. E. Dyson,William Frost, C. J. Rawson, Kathleen Williams, Martin Price,Robert M. Adams, and Jay Arnold Levine. An annotated bibliog-raphy guides the reader to important works for further study.

THE EDITORS: ROBERT A. GREENBERG was Professor of English at Queens College, City University of New York. He received his Ph.D.from New York University and taught at Cornell and New York University. He was the co-author of Robert Frost: An Introduction and Modern Essays: A Rhetorical Approach, and numerous scholarly and critical articles on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century subjects. WILLIAM B. PIPER is professor emeritus of English at Rice University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin and has taught at Cornell University, the University of Louisville, and Western Reserve University.He has published Laurence Sterne, The Heroic Couplet, The Literature of Common Sense, and many scholarly articles.

Preface

The Text of Gulliver's Travels (1726)

The Texts of A Tale of a Tub

 and Other Prose

 A Tale of a Tub

 The Battel of the Books

 A Discourse Concerning      (1697-171o)

  the Mechanical Operation of

  the Spirit, a Fragment

 A Meditation upon a Broom-stick (17o3-1o)

 A Tritical Essay ( 1707-11 )

  Predictions for the Year 1708

 The Accomplishment of the First of Mr. Bickerstaff's

  Predictions (1708)

 A Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. ( 1709 )

 From Journal to Stella (1710)

  The Tatler, No. CCXXX (1710)

 The Examiner, No. 14 (1710)

 The Tafler, No. 5 (1711)

 An Argument against Abolishing Christianity ( 1708-11 )

 A Letter to a Young Gentleman (1720)

 A Letter to the Tradesmen, Shop-Keepers, Farmers,

  and Common-People of Ireland (1724)

 A Short View of the State of Ireland (1728)

 A Modest Proposal (1729)

The Texts of the Poems

  Baucis and Philemon (17o6-o9)

  A Description of the Morning (17o9)

  A Description of a City Shower (171o)

  Phillis, or, the Progress of Love (1719)

  The Progress of Beauty (1719-2o)

  On Stella's Birth-day, 1719

 The Progress of Poetry (1720)

 Stella's Birth-day, 1721

 A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a late Famous

  General (1722)

 The Furniture of a Woman's Mind (1727)

 Stella's Birth-day, 1727

 A Pastoral Dialogue (1729)

 The Lady's Dressing Room ( 1730)

 A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed ( 1731 )

 Strephon and Chloe ( 1731 )

 Cassinus and Peter ( 1731 )

 Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D. ( 1731-32)

 The Beasts' Confession to the Priest ( 1732)

 On Poetry: A Rapsody (1733)

 The Day of Judgement ( 173z-33 )

Backgrounds

 Correspondence

  Swift to Charles Ford (Jan. 19,1724; Aug. 14, 1725)

  Swift to the Rev. Thomas Sheridan (Sept. 11, 1725)

  Swift to Alexander Pope (Sept. 29, 1725)

  Swift to Alexander Pope (Nov. 26, 1725)

  John Arbuthnot to Swift (Nov. 5, 1726)

  Alexander Pope to Swift (Nov. 16, 1726)

  John Gay to Swift (Nov. 17, 1726)

  Swift to Mrs. Howard (Nov. 27, 1726)

  Swift to Alexander Pope (Nov. 27, 1726)

  Swift to L'Abbe des Fontaines (July, 1727)

 William Wotton · Observations upon the Tale of a Tub

 Edmund Curl · Some Annotations and Exp!anatory

  Notes upon the Tale of a Tub

 Thomas Sheridan · [The Composition of "A Meditation

  upon a Broomstick"]

 Alexander Pope · [Swift's Odd Blunt Way]

 Alexander Pope · Mary Gulliver to Captain Lemuel Gulliver

 Laetitia Pilkington · [Swift's Conduct as a Host]

Criticism

 Norman O. Brown · The Excremental Vision

 Samuel Holt Monk · The Pride of Lemud Gulliver

 Allan Bloom · An Outline of Gulliver's Travels

 Nigel Dennis · Swift and Defoe

 Edward W. Rosenheim, Jr. · The Satiric Fiction

 A. E. Dyson · Swift: The Metamorphosis of Irony

 William Frost · The Irony of Swift and Gibbon

 C. I. Rawson · Gulliver and the Gentle Reader

 Kathleen Williams · Giddy Circumstance

 Martin Price · Swift's Rhetorical Art

 Robert M. Adams · Satiric Incongruity and the Inner

  Defeat of the Mind

 Jay Arnold Levine · The Design of A Tale of a Tub

Bibliography