The life of Jonathan Swift : a critical biography / Thomas Lockwood.

Hoboken, NJ : Wiley Blackwell, 2023.

©2023

xiv, 461 pages ; 23 cm.

"What we know directly of Swift's family history and childhood comes mostly from an unfinished ten-page manuscript account he wrote in later life called "Family of Swift," an eccentric and undependable document which nevertheless tells a story worth following. Swift's cousin once removed, Deane Swift, first printed this paper in 1755, along with his own additions and notes, saying that Swift wrote it sometime in the late 1720s, though more likely it was ten years later, when Swift was about 71. The narrative is characteristically detached in its third-person form but stuck in with shards of opinion, also characteristic: "a good deal of the Shrew in her Countenance." The first half of the account is devoted to his forebears on the Swift side, particularly his admired grandfather Thomas, who died some years before Swift was born, and his own part of the story cuts off when he is little more than thirty. Some of the details are wrong, as if he had worked purely from memory-always bad and getting worse by the time of this writing--though deliberate misrepresentation has been suggested too, unpersuasively if in some ways understandably: Swift did have a history of talking nonsense about his origins, in ways perhaps not always quite intended to be seen as he had been born in England, apparently because Swift told him so"-- Provided by publisher.

Online version: Lockwood, Thomas F. Life of Jonathan Swift Hoboken, NJ : Wiley, 2023

English

January 30, 2024

Includes bibliographical references and index.