Selected Bibliography:
Jonathan Swift
(1667-1745)
By Ann Kelly,
Howard University
Last revised 14 July 2000
Bibliographies
Primary Works
- Arthur H. Scouten and Herman Teerink, A Bibliography of
the Writings of Jonathan Swift, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Univ.
of Pennsylvania Press, 1963). A descriptive bibliography of the
multiple and various editions of Swift's works.
- David F. Foxon, English Verse 1701-1750: A Catalogue of
Separately Printed Poems with Notes on Contemporary Collected
Editions (London and New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1975-).
Supplements Teerink/Scouten.
- Alexander Lindsay, Index of English Literary Manuscripts,
III (1700-1800), Part 4 (Sterne-Young) (London: Mansell,
1997).
Secondary Works
- Louis A. Landa and James Edward Tobin, eds., Jonathan
Swift: A List of Critical Studies Published from 1895 to 1945
(rpt. New York: Octagon Books, 1975).
- Richard H. Rodino, ed., Swift Studies, 1965-1980: An
Annotated Bibliography (New York, Garland, 1984).
- James J. Stathis, ed., A Bibliography of Swift Studies
1945-1965 (Nashville: Vanderbilt Univ. Press, 1967).
Editions
Collected Works
Prose
- The Prose Works, ed. Herbert Davis et al., 14
vols. (Oxford: Blackwell/Shakespeare Head, 1939-74). Unannotated;
excellent introductions; textual variants noted. Date of first
publication given in parentheses.
- Vol. I, A Tale of a Tub and other Early Works
1696-1707, ed. Herbert Davis (1939).
- Vol. II, The Examiner and Other Pieces Written in
1710-11, ed. Herbert Davis (1941).
- Vol. III, Bickerstaff Papers and Pamphlets on the
Church, ed. Herbert Davis (1940).
- Vol. IV, A Proposal for Correcting the English Tongue,
Polite Conversation, Etc., ed. Herbert Davis (1957).
- Vol. V, Miscellaneous and Autobiographical Pieces,
Fragments, and Marginalia, ed. Herbert Davis (1962).
- Vol. VI, Political Tracts 1711-13, ed. Herbert Davis
(1951).
- Vol. VII, The History of the Four Last Years of the
Queen, ed. Herbert Davis; intro. by Harold Williams (1951).
- Vol. VIII, Political Tracts 1713-1719, ed. Herbert
Davis and Irvin Ehrenpreis (1953).
- Vol. IX, Irish Tracts 1720-1723 and Sermons, ed.
Herbert Davis; intro. to the sermons by Louis A. Landa (1948).
- Vol. X, The Drapier's Letters and other Works
1724-1725, ed. Herbert Davis (1941).
- Vol. XI, Gulliver's Travels, ed. Herbert Davis (1941).
- Vol. XII, Irish Tracts 1728-1733, ed. Herbert Davis
(1955).
- Vol. XIII, Directions to Servants and Miscellaneous Pieces
1733-1742, ed. Herbert Davis (1959).
- Vol. XIV, Index to the Prose Writings, compiled by
Irvin Ehrenpreis (1968).
Poetry
- Poems, ed. Harold Williams, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1958). Diplomatic edition; significant variants noted;
some annotation; poems of dubious attribution included in an
appendix.
- Complete Poems, ed. Pat Rogers (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, and New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1983). Modern spelling;
excellent annotations; poems of dubious attribution included in
the collection but identified as such in the notes.
Individual Works
- The Account Books of Jonathan Swift, ed. Dorothy
Thompson and Paul Thompson (Newark: Univ. of Delaware Press,
1984). Transcriptions of nine books in which Swift transcribed
his year's expenses.
- A Discourse of the Contests and Dissentions between the
Nobles and the Commons in Athens and Rome, ed. Frank H. Ellis
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1967). Annotated; introduction provides the
political context for Swift's first prose work.
- The Intelligencer (with Thomas Sheridan), ed. James
Woolley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). Excellent introduction,
full annotations, and bibliographical analysis of texts, most
heretofore unavailable in print.
- Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus (with Pope, Arbuthnot,
Gay, etc.), ed. Charles Kerby-Miller (New Haven: Yale Univ.
Press, 1950). Annotated, with a good introduction.
- Swift vs. Mainwaring: The Examiner and the Medley, ed.
Frank H. Ellis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). Shows how these
periodicals answer one another by printing them chronologically.
Annotated.
- A Tale of a Tub, ed. A. C. Guthkelch and D. Nichol
Smith, 2nd ed. (Clarendon Press, 1958). Annotated; appendices
with contextual materials, including published reactions.
- A Tale of a Tub, and Other Works, ed. Angus Ross and
David Woolley (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986). An excellent
choice for students; well annotated. The volume on Swift in the
Oxford Authors series, also edited by Ross and Woolley, is a good
choice as for collection (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998).
- The Drapier's Letters, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1935).
- Gulliver's Travels, ed. Paul Turner (Oxford: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1998). An excellent choice for students; well
annotated.
Correspondence
- Correspondence, ed. Harold Williams, 5 vols. (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1963-65). Excellent index; some annotation.
Vols. 4 and 5 were revised by David Woolley and reissued in
1972. Note that David Woolley is re-editing the correspondence;
vol. I (New York: Peter Lang, 1999) has appeared.
- Journal to Stella, ed. Herbert Williams, 2 vols.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948; rpt. New York: Barnes and Noble,
1975).
Biographies
- Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the
Age (London: Methuen, 1962-83). The standard biography.
Extremely thorough; separates the historical Swift from the
legendary Swift. The last volume is rather short, so Swift's
final years are not covered in as much detail as the early ones.
- Vol. I, Mr. Swift and his Contemporaries (1962)
- Vol. II, Dr. Swift (1967)
- Vol. III, Dean Swift (1983)
- David Nokes, Jonathan Swift, A Hypocrite Reversed: A
Critical Biography (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1985). The
best single-volume biography; available in paperback.
- A. C. Elias, Swift at Moor Park: Problems in Biography and
Criticism (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1982).
Focuses on Swift in the 1690s, when he was secretary to Sir
William Temple. Elias's negative view of Temple has been
contested.
- John Boyle, Lord Orrery, Remarks on the Life and Writings
of Dr. Jonathan Swift (London, 1752). Influential
eighteenth-century biography depicting Swift in a tragic mode.
Available in a modern edition, ed. Joao Froes (Newark.: Univ. of
Delaware Press, 2000).
- Laetitia Pilkington, Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington, 3
vols. (London, 1748-54). Contains a store of mostly comic
anecdotes that immediately become part of the Swift legend.
Available in a modern two-volume edition, ed. A. C. Elias
(Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1997). Outstanding footnotes.
Also published in facsimile by Garland Press, 1975.
- Samuel Johnson, "Swift," in Lives of the English Poets
(London, 1777-81). A provocative and influential negative
assessment of Swift's life and works. Available in most
anthologies of the works of Samuel Johnson; the standard edition
is The Lives of the Poets, ed. G. B. Hill, 3 vols.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905).
- William Makepeace Thackeray, "Swift," in The English
Humourists (London: Smith, Alder, 1853). The characterization
of Swift as an obscene, God-forsaking monster stimulated much
response.
Criticism
Reference Works
- Harold Williams, Dean Swift's Library (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1932). Contains a list of the books Swift
owned at his death.
- Donald Berwick, The Reputation of Jonathan Swift,
1781-1882 (1941; rpt. New York: Haskell, 1965). Contains
excerpts from influential essays, reviews, and biographies.
- Harold D. Kelling and Cathy Lynn Preston, A KWIC
Concordance to Jonathan Swift's "A Tale of a Tub," etc. (New
York: Garland, 1984). KWIC=Key word in context. In addition to
A Tale of a Tub, also indexes words in The Battle of
the Books and Discourse on the Mechanical Operation of the
Spirit.
- William R. LeFanu, A Catalogue of Books Belonging to Dr.
Jonathan Swift: Dean of St. Patrick's (Cambridge: Cambridge
Bibliographic Society, 1988). A facsimile of Swift's autograph
with an introduction and alphabetic catalog.
- Michael Shinagel, A Concordance to the Poems of Jonathan
Swift (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1972). Based on Harold
Williams's edition of the poems.
- Milton Voigt, Swift and the Twentieth Century
(Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1964). Surveys major trends in
Swift criticism from Swift's death to the mid-twentieth century.
- Kathleen Williams, ed., Swift: The Critical Heritage
(London: Routledge, 1970). Collection of early criticism of Swift
to the early nineteenth century.
Journals
- Swift Studies, ed. Hermann Real (1988-). Published
annually.
- The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats, ed. Peter A. Tasch,
Arthur J. Weitzman, and Roy S. Wolper (1968-).
Collections of Assorted Essays and Festschriften
- Aileen Douglas, Patrick Kelly, and 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).
- Denis Donoghue, ed. Jonathan Swift: A Critical
Anthology (Hamondsworth: Penguin, 1971).
- Herbert Davis, Jonathan Swift: Essays on His Satire and
Other Studies (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1964).
- Christopher Fox and Brenda Tooley, eds., Walking Naboth's
Vineyard: New Studies of Swift (South Bend: Univ. of Notre
Dame Press, 1995).
- John Irwin Fischer, Hermann Real, and James Woolley, eds.,
Swift and His Contexts (New York: AMS Press, 1989).
- Rudolph Freiburg, Arno Loffler, and Wolfgang Zach, eds.,
Swift: The Enigmatic Dean (Tübingen: Stauffenburg
Verlag, 1998).
- Norman A. Jeffares, ed., Fair Liberty Was All His Cry: A
Tercentenary Tribute to Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745 (London,
Macmillan; New York, St. Martin's Press, 1967).
- Roger McHugh and Philip Edwards, eds., Jonathan Swift: A
Dublin Tercentenary Tribute (Dublin: Dolmen Press and Oxford
Univ. Press, 1967).
- Donald Mell, ed., Pope, Swift, and Women Writers
(Newark: Univ. of Delaware Press, 1996).
- Frank Palmieri, ed., Critical Essays on Jonathan Swift
(New York: G. K. Hall, 1993).
- Clive T. Probyn, ed., The Art of Jonathan Swift
(London: Vision Press, 1978).
- Claude Rawson, ed., The Character of Swift's Satire: A
Revised Focus (Newark: Univ. of Delaware Press, 1983).
- Hermann Real and Heinz J. Vienken, eds., Proceedings of
the First Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift (Munich:
W. Fink, 1985).
- Richard Rodino and Hermann Real, eds., Reading Swift:
Papers from the Second Münster Symposium on Jonathan
Swift (Munich: W. Fink, 1993).
- Peter J. Schakel, ed., Critical Approaches to Teaching
Swift (New York: AMS Press, 1992).
- John Traugott, ed., Discussions of Jonathan Swift
(Boston: D. C. Heath, 1962).
- Ernest Tuveson, ed., Swift: A Collection of Critical
Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1964).
- Brian Vickers, ed., The World of Jonathan Swift
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1968).
Monographs and Focused Collections
Introductions and Overviews
- Frank Boyle, Swift as Nemesis: Modernity and Its
Satirist (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2000).
- John M. Bullitt, Jonathan Swift and the Anatomy of Satire:
A Study of Satiric Technique (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ.
Press, 1953).
- Alan D. Chalmers, Jonathan Swift and the Burden of the
Future (Newark: Univ. of Delaware Press, 1995).
- Keith Crook, A Preface to Swift (New York: Longman,
1998).
- Denis Donoghue, Jonathan Swift: A Critical
Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press 1969).
- Carole Fabricant, Swift's Landscape (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Univ. Press, 1982).
- Jean-Paul Forster, Jonathan Swift: The Fictions of the
Satirist (Berne and New York: Peter Lang, 1991; revised
1998).
- Marilyn Francus, The Converting Imagination: Linguistic
Theory in Swift's Satiric Prose (Carbondale: Southern
Illinois Univ. Press, 1994).
- Carol Houlihan, Flynn, The Body in Swift and Defoe
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990).
- Ann Cline Kelly, Swift and the English Language
(Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1988).
- Robert Phiddian, Swift's Parody (Cambridge: Cambridge
Univ. Press, 1995).
- Martin Price, Swift's Rhetorical Art (New Haven: Yale
Univ. Press, 1953; Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press,
Arcturus, 1973).
- Ricardo Quintana, The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift
(1936; rpt. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1965).
- Ricardo Quintana, Swift: An Introduction (London:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1955).
- Claude Rawson, Gulliver and the Gentle Reader: Studies in
Swift and Our Time (London: Routledge, 1973; Atlantic
Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1991).
- Patrick Reilly, Jonathan Swift: The Brave Desponder
(Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1982).
- Pat Rogers, Grub Street. Studies in a Subculture
(London: Methuen, 1972); abridged as Hacks and Dunces: Pope,
Swift, and Grub Street (London: Methuen, 1980).
- Edward Rosenheim, Swift and the Satirist's Art
(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1963).
- Peter Steele, Jonathan Swift: Preacher and Jester
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).
- David Ward, Jonathan Swift: An Introductory Essay
(London: Methuen, 1973).
- Kathleen Williams, Jonathan Swift and the Age of
Compromise (London: Constable, 1959).
- Nigel Wood, Swift (Harvester New Readings) (Brighton:
Harvester, 1986).
- Deborah B. Wyrick, Jonathan Swift and the Vested Word
(Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1988).
- Everett Zimmerman, Swift's Narrative Satires: Author and
Authority (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1983).
Gulliver's Travels
- Frank Brady, ed., Twentieth-Century Interpretations of
"Gulliver's Travels" (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,
1968). Primarily excerpts of essays.
- W. B. Carnochan, Lemuel Gulliver's Mirror for Man
(Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1968).
- Arthur E. Case, Four Essays on "Gulliver's Travels"
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1945).
- W. A. Eddy, "Gulliver's Travels": A Critical Study
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1923).
- Milton P. Foster, ed., A Casebook on Gulliver among the
Houyhnhnms (New York: Crowell, 1961).
- Richard Gravil, ed., "Gulliver's Travels": A Casebook
(London: Macmillan 1974).
- Brean Hammond. "Gulliver's Travels": Open Guides to
Literature (Philadelphia: Milton Keynes, 1988).
- Martin Kallich, The Other End of the Egg: Religious Satire
in "Gulliver's Travels" (Bridgeport: Conference on British
Studies at the Univ. of Bridgeport, 1970).
- F. P. Lock, The Politics of Gulliver's Travels
(Clarendon: Oxford, 1980).
- Edward J. Rielly, ed., Approaches to Teaching Swift's
"Gulliver's Travels" (New York: Modern Language Association
of America, 1988).
- Frederik Smith, ed., The Genres of "Gulliver's
Travels" (Newark: Univ. of Delaware Press, 1990).
- Kathleen Swaim, A Reading of Gulliver's Travels (The
Hague: Mouton, 1972).
- Brian Tippett, Brian, "Gulliver's Travels": The Critics
Debate (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1989).
A Tale of a Tub
- John R. Clark, Form and Frenzy in Swift's "Tale of a
Tub" (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1970).
- Kenneth Craven, Jonathan Swift and the Millenium of
Madness: The Information Age in Swift's "A Tale of a Tub"
(Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1992).
- Phillip Harth, Swift and Anglican Rationalism: The
Religious Background of "A Tale of a Tub" (Chicago: Univ. of
Chicago Press, 1961).
- Frances Deutsch Louis, Swift's Anatomy of Satire: A Study
of Swift's Epistemological Imagination in "A Tale of A Tub"
(Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1981).
- Ronald Paulson, Theme and Structure in Swift's "Tale of a
Tub" (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1960).
- Frederik N. Smith, Language and Reality in Swift's "A Tale
of a Tub" (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1979).
- Mariam K. Starkman, Swift's Satire on Learning in "A Tale
of a Tub" (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press; rpt. New York:
Octagon Books, 1968).
Poems
- Louise K. Barnett, Swift's Poetic Worlds (Newark:
Univ. of Delaware Press, 1982).
- Robert C. Elliott and Arthur H. Scouten, The Poetry of
Jonathan Swift: Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar (Los
Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1981).
- A. B. England, Energy and Order in the Poetry of Swift
(Lewisburg: Bucknell Univ. Press, 1980).
- John Irwin Fischer, On Swift's Poetry (Gainesville:
Univ. Presses of Florida, 1978).
- John Irwin Fischer and Donald C Mell, eds., Contemporary
Studies in Swift's Poetry (Newark: Univ. of Delaware Press,
1981).
- Nora Crow Jaffe, The Poet Swift (Hanover: Univ. Press
of New England, 1977).
- Maurice Johnson, The Sin of Wit: Jonathan Swift as
a Poet (Syracuse: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1950). Path-breaking
and enduring.
- Ellen Pollak, The Poetics of Sexual Myth: Gender and
Ideology in the Verse of Swift and Pope (Chicago: Univ. of
Chicago Press, 1983).
- Peter J. Schakel, The Poetry of Jonathan Swift: Allusion
and Development of a Poetic Style (Madison: Univ. of
Wisconsin Press, 1978).
- David M. Vieth, ed., Essential Articles for the Study of
Swift's Poetry (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1984).
- James D. Woolley, Swift's Later Poems: Studies in
Circumstances and Texts (New York: Garland, 1988).
Writings on Irish, English, and Ecclesiastical
Politics
- Richard I. Cook, Jonathan Swift as a Tory Pamphleteer
(Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1967).
- J. A. Downie, Robert Harley and the Press: Propaganda and
the Public Opinion in the Age of Swift and Defoe (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979).
- J. A. Downie, Jonathan Swift: Political Writer
(London: Routledge, 1984).
- Daniel Eilon, Factions' Fictions: Ideological Closure in
Swift's Satire (Newark: Univ. of Delaware Press, 1991).
- Irvin Ehrenpreis, Acts of Implication: Suggestion and
Covert Meaning in the Works of Dryden, Swift, Pope, and
Austen (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1980).
- Oliver W. Ferguson, Jonathan Swift and Ireland
(Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1962).
- Michael Foot, The Pen and the Sword: A Year in the Life of
Jonathan Swift (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1957). Focuses on
the propaganda campaign against the Duke of Marlborough.
- Bertrand Goldgar, Walpole and the Wits: The Relation of
Politics to Literature, 1722-1742 (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska
Press, 1976).
- Ian Higgins, Swift's Politics: A Study in Disaffection
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994). Advances the strongly
contested thesis that Swift was a Jacobite.
- Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics
of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
Univ. Press, 1968).
- Louis Landa, Swift and the Church of Ireland (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1954).
- F. P. Lock, Swift's Tory Politics (London: Duckworth,
and Newark: Univ. of Delaware Press, 1983).
- Robert Mahony, Jonathan Swift: The Irish Identity (New
Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1995).
Please send comments and corrections to biblio@c18.org.