First published in 1983, Dean Swift is the concluding book in a series of three volumes providing a detailed exploration of the events of Swift’s life. The third volume follows Swift’s life and career from 1714 to 1745 and sets it against the public events of the age, paying close attention to political and economic change, ecclesiastical problems, social issues, and literary history. It traces Swift’s rise to becoming first citizen of Ireland and looks in detail at the composition, publication, and reception of Gulliver’s Travels, as well as many of Swift’s other works, both poetry and prose. It also explores Swift’s later years, his love affairs with Esther Johnson and Esther Vanhomrigh, his complicated friendships with Pope, Lord Bolingbroke, and Archbishop King, and his declining health. Dean Swift is a hugely detailed insight into Swift’s life from 1714 until his death and will be of interest to anyone wanting to find out more about his life and works.

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 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.

Jonathan Swift: Irish Blow-in (along with its companion, Jonathan Swift: Our Dean) aspires to be the most accurate and engaging critical biography of Jonathan Swift ever published. It builds on the thorough research of Irvin Ehrenpreis’s highly regarded 1962–1983 three-volume biography, but reinterprets Swift’s life and works by reassessing his childhood, stressing his exuberance, honestly portraying his intense affection for Esther Johnson (he called her “saucebox” and not “Stella” when she was in her twenties), and not projecting Swift’s later-in-life angry behavior back onto his first forty-seven years.

A rich and riveting portrait of the man behind Gulliver’s Travels, by a “vivid, ardent, and engaging” (New York Times Book Review) author. One of Europe’s most important literary figures, Jonathan Swift was also an inspired humorist, a beloved companion, and a conscientious Anglican minister—as well as a hoaxer and a teller of tales. His anger against abuses of power would produce the most famous satires of the English language: Gulliver’s Travels as well as the Drapier Papers and the unparalleled Modest Proposal, in which he imagined the poor of Ireland farming their infants for the tables of wealthy colonists. John Stubbs’s biography captures the dirt and beauty of a world that Swift both scorned and sought to amend. It follows Swift through his many battles, for and against authority, and in his many contradictions, as a priest who sought to uphold the dogma of his church; as a man who was quite prepared to defy convention, not least in his unshakable attachment to an unmarried woman, his “Stella”; and as a writer whose vision showed that no single creed holds all the answers. Impeccably researched and beautifully told, in Jonathan Swift Stubbs has found the perfect subject for this masterfully told biography of a reluctant rebel—a voice of withering disenchantment unrivaled in English.

This authoritative edition brings together a unique selection from the full range of Swift's fifty-year career--prose, poetry, and letters--to give the essence of his work and thinking. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) is best known as the author of Gulliver's Travels, which alone would have secured his place in the history of English literature. But in addition to this classic fictional satire, Swift wrote numerous works concerning politics, religion, and Ireland, some savage, others humorous, all suffused with his tremendous wit and inventiveness. This anthology includes satirical works such as A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books, political pamphlets, pieces for the popular press, poems, and a generous selection from Swift's correspondence. Presented chronologically, the anthology offers a new and clearer awareness of the unity as well as the complexity of Swift's vision, and the powerful bonds between disparate pieces.