The Essential Writings of Jonathan Swift: A Norton Critical Edition

This Norton Critical Edition is the fullest single-volume collection of Jonathan Swift's writings, encompassing not only the major prose satires―A Tale of the Tub, Gulliver’s Travels, and A Modest Proposal―but also a large number of other works, including his most important poems and political writings. The texts are accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations by Ian Higgins, thirty illustrations, and a full introduction by Claude Rawson. This is an indispensable edition for scholar and student alike.

“Contexts” features a generous selection of contemporary materials, among them Swift's letters, autobiographical documents, and personal writings.

“Criticism” provides readers with a wide chronological and thematic range of scholarly interpretations, divided into two sections. The first, “1745–1940,” includes assessments by Henry Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Makepeace Thackeray, D. H. Lawrence, W. B. Yeats, F. R. Leavis, and André Breton, among others. The second, “After 1940,” is by subject and collects critical discussions of A Tale of the Tub, the poems, the English and Irish politics, and Gulliver’s Travels, by Hugh Kenner, Marcus Walsh, Irvin Ehrenpreis, Penelope Wilson, Derek Mahon, S. J. Connolly, George Orwell, R. S. Crane, Jenny Mezciems, Ian Higgins, and Claude Rawson.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included. 1 map, illustrations