Jonathan Swift and the Eighteenth-Century Book - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1107016266 ISBN 13: 9781107016262

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2013

Synopsis

Jonathan Swift lived through a period of turbulence and innovation in the evolution of the book. His publications, perhaps more than those of any other single author, illustrate the range of developments that transformed print culture during the early Enlightenment. Swift was a prolific author and a frequent visitor at the printing house, and he wrote as critic and satirist about the nature of text. The shifting moods of irony, complicity and indignation that characterise his dealings with the book trade add a layer of complexity to the bibliographic record of his published works. The essays collected here offer the first comprehensive, integrated survey of that record. They shed new light on the politics of the eighteenth-century book trade, on Swift's innovations as a maker of books, on the habits and opinions revealed by his commentary on printed texts and on the re-shaping of the Swiftian book after his death.

About this title

Review:

'Swiftians and book-history addicts will find something novel and stimulating in each chapter of this enjoyable book; I can also highly recommend the introduction, by the joint editors James McLaverty and Paddy Bullard. This is a masterpiece of elegant, succinct scholarship that indicates the relationship between the themes covered in the book, showing the range of original scholarship behind the Swift Works project and the value of the textual editing even of well-known texts. The Swift who emerges from these pages - obsessive maker of books, crafty manipulator of bookmen and publishing methods, mischievous exploiter of multiple authorial and editorial voices - was a key figure in the burgeoning publishing culture in England and Ireland in the early eighteenth century. This beautifully-produced volume not only reminds one of his significance but, in itself, of the value of the original scholarship that underpins serious textual editing.' Andrew Carpenter, SHARP News

Book Description:

This collection of essays addresses the relationship between Swift and the world of commercial print, and in so doing illustrates the range of developments with which writers, booksellers and their public transformed the business of print during the first half of the eighteenth century.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1107016266
• ISBN 13: 9781107016262
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 308
• Editor: Bullard Paddy, McLaverty James