Jonathan Swift

Against the trend of the times, RS aimed for historical interest rather than literary canonicity, compiling in his Specimens of the Later English Poets a collection of representative voices rather than a garland: The taste...

Each apology begins with a cliché like To tell you the truth—, or Don't mind me, dear—. One point of the joke (as in Swift 's Polite Conversation, 1738) is the flatness and inadequacy...

One interesting feature is the inclusion of nine poems by other authors: the canonical Prior , Swift , and Pope , the lesser-known men John Scott , William Broome , and Nathaniel Cotton , and...

Here she extols Delany 's virtues in the voice of the goddess who hates and resents them (and who is presumed to be behind the recent attacks on Delany stemming from his friendship with Swift)...

Her poem to Lord Carteret concerns a work probably by Swift . The publication addressed to Lady Carteret (actually consisting of one poem to her and one to her daughter) shows a strong sense of...

This novel provides a satirical portrait of high society in early eighteenth-century England. It centres on Henrietta, Countess of Marchmont, an upper-class orphan enduring a loveless marriage and imperilled by her first visit to...

The unnamed male narrator describes himself as a foreigner, but has lived in London long enough to be mistaken for an Englishman. In the end he reveals himself to be an inhabitant of Japan...

Her first poem, an Introductory Address to the Muse, uses the language of love and courtship: In secret shades alone I woo'd thee then / By stealth, nor to the world durst tell my love...

The Art of Tormenting is often referred to as a novel, but its genre is really that of the spoof instruction manual: the genre of Pope 's The Art of Sinking in Poetry and Swift

MR 's own twenty poems include prefatory verses as editor, written for the occasion. She prints work by the late Henrietta O'Neill (the well-known Ode to the Poppy), Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire (St...

Her topics here, all relevant to the escalating American demands for independence, are the declining economy, rising prices, and an oppressive burden of taxes. She was entering a debate previously carried on among such...

EB offers original, discriminating praise for women's writing: Susanna Centlivre (her inspiration, she says), Eliza Haywood (though she regrets her exposure of women's faults), Aphra Behn , and Delarivier Manley , whom she calls the...

EH 's fictional Swift is widely unlike the original, especially in prose style.

The Elixir of Life opens with the waking vision of a man and woman in their summer prime, he looking like Apollo, she looking like an angel with just a touch of the siren or...

It is a poem highly characteristic of her manner: a moral tale featuring a personified quality, humorous, ironic, and written in octosyllabic couplets reminiscent of Swift or Prior . Prudence and Oeconomy are the daughters...