This book investigates slavery in the work of Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and John Gay. These writers were connected with a Tory ministry, which attempted to increase the English share of the international slave trade.

In this book, Dustin Griffin explores the lifelong conversation between two great eighteenth-century English writers, Swift and Pope.

Draws on discoveries made in the past three decades to paint a new portrait of the satirist, speculating on his parentage, love life, and relationships while claiming that the public image he projected was intentionally misleading.

1. Wotton vs. Temple -- 2. Bentley vs. Christ Church -- 3. Stroke and Counterstroke -- 4. The Querelle -- 5. Ancient Greece and Modern Scholarship -- 6. Pope's Iliad -- 7. Pope and the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns -- 8. Bentley's Milton -- 9. History and Theory -- 10. Ancients -- 11. Moderns -- 12. Ancients and Moderns.

Jonathan Swift's Thoughts on Various Subjects, originally published as an essay in 1706, is a collection of wit and wisdom from one of the English language's finest wordsmiths and greatest satirists. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet and cleric. He is regarded by many as the finest prose satirist in the English language. He is most famous for Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal, which are considered classics of English literature.