When was Swift's A Tale of a Tub first published?
294082#26
The "Tale" was originally published in 1704 by John Nutt. Swift had used Benjamin Tooke previously when publishing for Sir William Temple. He would use Tooke for both the fifth edition of the "Tale" (1710) and later works. Tooke's successor, Benjamin Motte, published Swift's "Gulliver's Travels". This difference in printer is only one of the things that led to debate over authorship of the work.
A Tale of a Tub
428675#4
Jonathan Swift worked for William Temple during the time of the controversy, and Swift's "A Tale of a Tub" (1703/1705) takes part in the debate. From its first publication, Swift added a short satire entitled "The Battle of the Books" to the "Tale of a Tub." In this piece, there is an epic battle fought in a library when various books come alive and attempt to settle the arguments between moderns and ancients. In Swift's satire, he skilfully manages to avoid saying which way victory fell. He portrays the manuscript as having been damaged in places, thus leaving the end of the battle up to the reader.
The Battle of the Books
294082#0
A Tale of a Tub was the first major work written by Jonathan Swift, arguably his most difficult satire and perhaps his most masterly. The "Tale" is a prose parody divided into sections each delving into the morals and ethics of the English. Composed between 1694 and 1697, it was eventually published in 1704. It was long regarded as a satire on religion, and has famously been attacked for that, starting with William Wotton.
A Tale of a Tub
294082#27
The first, second, and third editions of the "Tale" appeared in 1704; the fifth edition came out in 1710. In "The Apology for the &c.", Swift indicates that he originally gave his publisher a preliminary copy of the work, while he kept a blotted copy at his own hand and lent other copies including one to Thomas Swift, Jonathan's "parson cousin". As a consequence, the first edition appeared with many errors. The second edition was a resetting of the type. The third edition was a reprint of the second, with corrections, and the fourth edition contained corrections of the third.
A Tale of a Tub
294082#33
Robert Hendrickson notes in his book "British Literary Anecdotes" that "Swift was always partial to his strikingly original "The Tale of a Tub" (1704). On reading the work again in later years, he exclaimed 'Good God! What a genius I had when I wrote that book!'"
A Tale of a Tub
294082#32
Stylistically and in sentiment, the "Tale" is undeniably Swift's. Most important in this regard is the narrative pose and the creation of narrative parody. The dramatic pretense of writing as a character is in keeping with Jonathan Swift's lifelong practice. Furthermore, Thomas Swift has left few literary remains. Thomas Swift's authorship is examined in the summary of A. C. Guthkelch and D. Nichol Smith's "A Tale of a Tub" (1920 and 1958), where they say, "all the evidence for Thomas Swift's participation in the "Tale"... [is] nothing but rumour and [Edmund] Curll's "Key"." Indeed, in 1710 Swift had the fifth edition republished by Tooke, and he explained in a letter how the rumour had been started. He said that, when the publication initially took place, Swift was abroad in Ireland and "that little Parson-cousin of mine" "affected to talk suspiciously, as if he had some share in it." In other words, anonymity conspired with Thomas Swift's desire for fame to create the confusion. Afterward, only critical preference seems to account for anyone holding Thomas Swift the author.
A Tale of a Tub
294082#13
If Swift hoped that the "Tale of a Tub" would win him a living, he would have been disappointed. Swift himself believed that the book cost him any chance of high position within the church. It is most likely, though, that Swift was not seeking a clerical position with the "Tale." Instead, it was probably meant to establish him as a literary and political figure and to strike out a set of positions that would win the notice of influential men. This it did. As a consequence of this work, and his activity in Church causes, Swift became a familiar of Robert Harley, future Earl of Oxford, and Henry St. John, the future Viscount Bolingbroke. When the Tories gained the government in 1710, Swift was rewarded for his work. By 1713–14, however, the Tory government had fallen, and Swift was made Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin—an appointment he considered an exile.
A Tale of a Tub
294082#11
Born of English parents in Ireland, Jonathan Swift was working as Sir William Temple's secretary at the time he composed "A Tale of a Tub" (1694–1697). The publication of the work coincided with Swift's striking out on his own, having despaired of getting a good "living" from Temple or Temple's influence. There is speculation about what caused the rift between Swift and his employer, but, as A. C. Elias persuasively argues, it seems that the final straw came with Swift's work on Temple's "Letters." Swift had been engaged to translate Temple's French correspondence, but Temple, or someone close to Temple, edited the French text to make Temple seem both prescient and more fluent. Consequently, the letters and the translations Swift provided did not gibe, and, since Swift could not accuse Temple of falsifying his letters, and because the public would never believe that the retired state minister had lied, Swift came across as incompetent.
Even though Swift published the "Tale" as he left Temple's service, it was conceived earlier, and the book is a salvo in one of Temple's battles. Swift's general polemic concerns an argument (the "Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns") that had been over for nearly ten years by the time the book was published. The "Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns" was a French academic debate of the early 1690s, occasioned by Fontenelle arguing that modern scholarship had allowed modern man to surpass the ancients in knowledge. Temple argued against this position in his "On Ancient and Modern Learning" (where he provided the first English formulation of the commonplace that modern critics see more only because they are dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants), and Temple's somewhat naive essay prompted a small flurry of responses. Among others, two men who took the side opposing Temple were Richard Bentley (classicist and editor) and William Wotton (critic).
A Tale of a Tub
294082#8
During the Restoration the print revolution began to change every aspect of British society. It became possible for anyone to spend a small amount of money and have his or her opinions published as a broadsheet, and to gain access to the latest discoveries in science, literature, and political theory, as books became less expensive and digests and "indexes" of the sciences grew more numerous. The difficulty lay in discerning truth from falsehood, credible claims from impossible one. Swift writes "A Tale of a Tub" in the guise of a narrator who is excited and gullible about what the new world has to offer, and feels that he is quite the equal or superior of any author who ever lived because he, unlike them, possesses 'technology' and newer opinions. Swift seemingly asks the question of what a person with no discernment but with a thirst for knowledge would be like, and the answer is the narrator of "Tale of a Tub."
A Tale of a Tub
338104#27
In Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), Irish literature in English found its first writer of real genius. Although best known for prose works like "Gulliver's Travels" and "A Tale of a Tub", Swift was a poet of considerable talent. Technically close to his English contemporaries Pope and Dryden, Swift's poetry evinces the same tone of savage satire, and horror of the human body and its functions that characterises much of his prose. Swift also published translations of poems from the Irish.
Irish poetry