Jonathan Swift: Our Dean

Jonathan Swift: Our Dean details the political climax of his remarkable career—his writing and publication of The Drapier's Letters (1724), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729)—stressing the relentless political opposition he faced and the numerous ways, including through his sermons, that he worked from his political base as Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, psychologically as well as physically just outside the Dublin city walls, to attempt to rouse the Irish people to awareness of the ways that England was abusing them. This book faces squarely the likelihood that Swift had a physical affair with Esther Vanhomrigh between 1719 and 1723, and reassesses in the light of that likelihood his conflicting relations with Esther Vanhomrigh and Esther Johnson. It traces the many loving friendships with both men and women in Ireland that sustained Swift during the years when his health gradually failed him, enabling him to continue indefatiguably, both through his writings and his authority as Dean of St. Patrick's, to contribute to the public welfare in the face of relentless British attempts to squeeze greater and greater profits out of their Irish colony. Finally, it traces how Swift's political indignation led to his treating many people, friends and enemies, cruelly during the 1730s, even while his humor and his ability to make and attract new friends sustained themselves until his memory finally failed him in 1742. This biography, in two books, Jonathan Swift: Irish Blow-in and Jonathan Swift:Our Dean, comes closer than past biographies to capturing how it felt to Swift himself to live his life. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.  

Table of Contents:
Contents Preface Acknowledgments  List of Abbreviations for Frequently Cited Sources PART 1: 1714—1720: TEACHING KNIGHTLEY CHETWODE HOW TO BEHAVE 1. Beached on the Liffey 2. Anneantissement, Then Resilience 3. Settling In 4. Hessy in Dublin 5. Truly Home 6. "The Public Wind Full in My Teeth" 7. Surveillance 8. Unalloyed Kindness 9. Jacobite? 10. From Mentee to Mentor 11. How Do You Combat Unlimited Power? 12. Swift as Chief Executive Officer 13. Clear, Practical Advice 14. Political Sermons of the 1720s 15. Trying, Despite the Political Odds, to Get the Right People into the Right Places 16. The Esther-Swift-Esther Triangle Tests All Three of Its Vertices 17. Forty-Seven-Year-Old Swift and Twenty-Six-Year-Old Pope 18. Swift's Web of Sustaining Irish Friends 19. The Earl of Oxford Walks Out of the Tower 20. A New Generation of Friends 21. From Essentially Cheerful to Essentially Angry 22. Trying to Let Go of the Earl of Oxford 23. Coffee 24. Reaffirming Respect for Esther Johnson 25. Restoking the Publication Fires PART 2: 1720—1726: "I ATTEMPTED TO RISE, BUT WAS [AT FIRST] NOT ABLE TO STIR" 26. Struggling with Illness 27. Free Again to Speak? 28. In the Shadow of Molly's Decline, Hessy Living a Half-Life with Swift 29. True to Both? 30. Looking for a Course 31. The First European Microlender 32. Chief Justice Whitshed and Robinson Crusoe Beget Gulliver's Travels 33. Keeping Hessy at a Distance to Concentrate on Gulliver's Travels 34. Fair to Middling Poems, and an Elegy for the Duke of Marlborough 35. A Humbling Year: 1723 36. A Fourth Vanhomrigh Succumbs to Consumption 37. Getting Away 38. Reaffirming Commitment to and Respect for Esther Johnson, This Time Doing it Well 39. Christmas at Quilca, Steeped in the Mindset of Gulliver's Travels 40. Standing Up to British Presumption 41. "One [Deaf] Man in his Shirt" Refusing to Be Intimidated 42. Against All Odds, Stymying Wood and Walpole 43. Wielding Pickaxes, Digging Peat, Re-Courting (and Sealing his Love for) Esther Johnson 44. David Fells Goliath 45. Preparing for England, 1726 PART 3: 1726—1728: CHOOSING ESTHER JOHNSON OVER PROFESSIONAL OPPORTUNITY IN ENGLAND 46. Tete-a-Tete with Sir Robert Walpole 47. Caring for Esther Johnson 48. A Voyage to Lilliput 49. A Voyage to Brobdingnag 50. A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg, and Japan 51. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms 52. Aftermath 53. What Did Swift Believe? 54. In Ireland while Gulliver's Travels Began to Do Its Work 55. Last Visit to England 56. Swift's Literary Career Capped with Accolades in Paris (Not) 57. Choosing Patty Rolt over Alexander Pope 58. King Lear with a Sense of Humoron the Heath at Holyhead 59. Returning to Esther Johnson, and in Consequence, to Ireland 60. Losing Esther Johnson in Her Prime PART 4: 1728—1731: PREMATURE VERSES ON THE DEATH OF DR. SWIFT 61. Even Without Esther Johnson, Deciding to Stay in Ireland 62. Sarah Harding Redivivus 63. The Intelligencer—Full Talent and Vigor, But Unsustained 64. Eight Months with the Achesons 65. Without Esther Johnson and Archbishop King, Ungoverned 66. Rough Drafts for A Modest Proposal  67. Drapier's Hill 68. A Modest Proposal and a Stunningly Modest Response 69. OK, if Nobody Will Listen... 70. The Triumfeminate and the Pilkingtons 71. Libels and Epistles 72. Swift's First (But Not His Last) "Freedom of the City" Fiasco 73. Final Visit to a Couple about to Separate  74. Ghost Writing for Captain Creichton 75. Letters and Fun 76. Snow White (Laetitia Pilkington) and the Seven Dwarfs (Ten Clergymen) 77. Incendiary in Politics, Loving as a Friend, but Sometimes Confusing the Two 78. Let's Try a Comic Poem about My Death PART 5: 1732—1745: INTERNAL MONITOR NOT ALWAYS ENGAGED 79. The Bishops Get Their Due 80. Be Wary of Presbyterians, But More Wary of Americans 81. Everybody Poops 82. Fully Home in the Deanery 83. Financial Security 84. Life with Laetitia Pilkington, 1732—1733 85. Fighting Robert Walpole through Local Elections 86. With No Parliament in Session, Life Is Good in Dublin 87. Parliament Returns 88. Swift's Better Business Bureau 89. Capping an Otherwise Successful Year by Being Threatened by an MP 90. Stepping Aside for the Next Generation 91. Still Able to Rise to the Occasion 92. The Good Martha Whiteway 93. Disagreeable Quilca, Agreeable Martha Whiteway 94. One More Hopeful Young Man Taken 95. Jailed Printers Revive Swift's Pen 96. Difficult, but Still with a Sense of Humor 97. Badges for Beggars 98. Publishing the History of Queen Anne's Ministry (Not) 99. Humility Recommended and Practiced 100. Distorting the Record 101. Swift's Guide to Domestic Guerilla Warfare 102. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back 103. Swift's Will 104. Last Glimpses of Swift 105. Loving Care: John Lyon, Martha Whiteway, Anne Ridgeway 106. Our Dean Bibliography About the Author

About the Author :
Eugene Hammond is Director of the Writing Program at Stony Brook University.

Review :
"The first study to consider here is the two-volume life of Swift by Eugene Hammond. These are magisterial volumes."— Studies in English Literature "Any decent biography of a writer will make you want to go back to the work, and Hammond achieves this."— Eighteenth Century Fiction