About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherUniversity of Delaware Press

ISBN-101644530406

ISBN-139781644530405

eBay Product ID (ePID)19038646900

Product Key Features

Number of Pages822 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication NameJonathan Swift : Irish Blow-In

Publication Year2016

SubjectLiterary, Historical, European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

TypeTextbook

AuthorEugene Hammond

Subject AreaLiterary Criticism, Biography & Autobiography

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height2 in

Item Weight34.9 Oz

Item Length9.1 in

Item Width6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceCollege Audience

Dewey Edition23

ReviewsAny decent biography of a writer will make you want to go back to the work, and Hammond achieves this., This is a remarkable book. It gives us a comprehensive biography that supplies a sense of both Swift's daily life and the intellectual contexts in which he wrote his major and minor works. Ehrenpreis's three-volume Swift (1963-85) was a major advance, but suffered from its Freudian psychology and unsupported claims about Swift's sexuality, relationships, and aspirations--which Hammond politely but bluntly challenges. Hammond's Jonathan Swift compellingly presents its subject as first and foremost a civic activist, a man who wrote to live rather than living to write. This biography is important and persuasive, deeply learned, careful, and engaging. It will be a landmark in Swift studies.--Ashley Marshall, Associate Professor of English, University of Nevada, Reno, The First study to consider here is the two-volume life of Swift by Eugene Hammond. These are magisterial volumes., Since the publication of the third and final volume in Irvin Ehrenpreis's Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age (1983), several biographies of Swift have appeared, attempting to correct Ehrenpreis's narrative or his character of Swift, but all have been derivative and slanted. Professor Hammond has produced the first new biography that adds to the biographical record and that Swift scholars must consult. By avoiding the extensive digressions in Ehrenpreis's Swift, and by scrutinizing and rejecting testimonies (including some by the elderly Swift) that passed distortions, falsehoods, and improbabilities into the historical record, Hammond has written the most coherent, fluent, and proportional narrative of Swift's life, constructing a plausible characterization that most scholars will recognize as a true portrait of the complex genius and outsider born in Dublin in 1667 and buried there in 1745. Hammond's interpretation and re-creation of Swift's life stresses the man's own aspirations, feelings, and values, characterizing Swift as a "civic activist" who wished "to make history, and record it." After reading this biography, with its thesis that "Principled behavior, whether in or out of public station, was what he lived for, and why he wrote," Swift may stop rolling over in his grave.--Jim May, Penn State University, Editor, The Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer, This is the companion volume to Hammond's Jonathan Swift: Irish Blow-In (2016), which covers the first half of Swift's life, and together the two constitute a full biography of the private and public personae of Swift. Divided into five chronological sections, the present volume covers the period from the defeat of the Tory government in 1714 to Swift's death in 1745. Hammond examines the climax of his subject's career, giving considerable space to both the political climate and Swift's major literary output of the 1720s: The Drapier's Letters, Gulliver's Travels, and A Modest Proposal. Hammond explores Swift's private life, specifically his relationships with Esther Vanhomrigh and Esther Johnson, along with the colonial scene in Ireland that provoked much of his commentary. Tracing both Swift's indignation and his capacity for friendship, Hammond offers a carefully researched view of Swift that unites the critic and satirist with the man of faith who cared for the poor and exercised his talent in opposition to the abuse of power. Hammond's biographical treatment of Swift is a significant resource for serious scholars of the 18th century. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.--CHOICE

Grade FromEleventh Grade

IllustratedYes

Dewey Decimal823.5

SynopsisJonathan Swift: Irish Blow-in covers the arc of the first half of Jonathan Swift's life, offering fresh details of the contentment and exuberance of his childhood, of the support he received from his grandmother, of his striking affection for Esther Johnson from the time she was ten years old (his pet name for her in her twenties was "saucebox"), of his precocious entry into English politics with his Contests and Dissensions pamphlet, of his brilliant and much misunderstood Tale of a Tub , and of his naive determination to do well both as a vicar of the small parish of Laracor in Ireland and as a writer for the Tory administration trying to pull England out of debt by ending the war England was engaged in with France. I do not share with past biographers the sense that Swift had a deprived childhood. I do not share the suspicion that most of Swift's enmities were politically motivated. I do not feel critical of him because he was often fastidious with his money. I do not think he was insincere about his religious faith. His pride, his sexual interests, his often shocking or uninhibited language, his instinct for revenge - emphasized by many previous biographers - were all fundamental elements of his being, but elements that he either used for rhetorical effect, or that he tried to keep in check, and that he felt that religion helped him to keep in check. Swift had as firm a conviction as did Freud that we are born with wayward tendencies; unlike Freud, though, he saw both religion and civil society as necessary and helpful checks on those wayward tendencies, and he (frequently, but certainly not always) acknowledged that he shared those tendencies with the rest of us. This biography, in two books, Jonathan Swift: Irish Blow-in and Jonathan Swift: Our Dean , will differ from most literary biographies in that it does not aim to show how Swift's life illuminates his writings, but rather how and why Swift wrote in order to live the life he wanted to live. I have liberally quoted Swift's own words in this biography because his inventive expression of ideas, both in his public works and in his private letters, was what has made him a unique and compelling figure in the history of literature. I hope in these two books to come closer than past biographies to capturing how it felt to Swift himself to live his life. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press., Jonathan Swift: Our Dean details the political climax of his remarkable career--his writing and publication of The Drapier's Letters (1724), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729)--stressing the relentless political opposition he faced and the numerous ways, including through his sermons, that he worked from his political base as Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, psychologically as well as physically just outside the Dublin city walls, to attempt to rouse the Irish people to awareness of the ways that England was abusing them. This book faces squarely the likelihood that Swift had a physical affair with Esther Vanhomrigh between 1719 and 1723, and reassesses in the light of that likelihood his conflicting relations with Esther Vanhomrigh and Esther Johnson. It traces the many loving friendships with both men and women in Ireland that sustained Swift during the years when his health gradually failed him, enabling him to continue indefatiguably, both through his writings and his authority as Dean of St. Patrick's, to contribute to the public welfare in the face of relentless British attempts to squeeze greater and greater profits out of their Irish colony. Finally, it traces how Swift's political indignation led to his treating many people, friends and enemies, cruelly during the 1730s, even while his humor and his ability to make and attract new friends sustained themselves until his memory finally failed him in 1742. This biography, in two books, Jonathan Swift: Irish Blow-in and Jonathan Swift: Our Dean, comes closer than past biographies to capturing how it felt to Swift himself to live his life., Jonathan Swift: Irish Blow-in covers the arc of the first half of Jonathan Swift's life, offering fresh details of the contentment and exuberance of his childhood, of the support he received from his grandmother, of his striking affection for Esther Johnson from the time she was ten years old (his pet name for her in her twenties was "saucebox"), of his precocious entry into English politics with his Contests and Dissensions pamphlet, of his brilliant and much misunderstood Tale of a Tub , and of his naive determination to do well both as a vicar of the small parish of Laracor in Ireland and as a writer for the Tory administration trying to pull England out of debt by ending the war England was engaged in with France., "Jonathan Swift: Our Dean (along with its companion, Jonathan Swift: Irish Blow-in) aspires to be the most accurate and engaging critical biography of Jonathan Swift ever. It builds on the thorough research of Irvin Ehrenpreis's highly regarded 1962-1983 three-volume biography, but re-interprets Swift's life and works by re-assessing his 1714-1720 [period] repudiating the pretender while remaining friends with many who did not, by acknowledging that he likely had a physical affair with Esther Vanhomrigh between 1719 and 1723, by questioning whether in any sense he was a misanthrope, by noting his real care for Esther Johnson in her final illness, and by emphasizing the mutual love between Swift and his caretakers during his final difficult years."--