Jonathan Swift: Irish Blow-in

Jonathan Swift: Irish Blow-in covers the arc of the first half of Jonathan Swift's life, offering fresh details of the contentment and exuberance of his childhood, of the support he received from his grandmother, of his striking affection for Esther Johnson from the time she was ten years old (his pet name for her in her twenties was "saucebox"), of his precocious entry into English politics with his Contests and Dissensions pamphlet, of his brilliant and much misunderstood Tale of a Tub, and of his naive determination to do well both as a vicar of the small parish of Laracor in Ireland and as a writer for the Tory administration trying to pull England out of debt by ending the war England was engaged in with France. I do not share with past biographers the sense that Swift had a deprived childhood. I do not share the suspicion that most of Swift's enmities were politically motivated. I do not feel critical of him because he was often fastidious with his money. I do not think he was insincere about his religious faith. His pride, his sexual interests, his often shocking or uninhibited language, his instinct for revenge – emphasized by many previous biographers – were all fundamental elements of his being, but elements that he either used for rhetorical effect, or that he tried to keep in check, and that he felt that religion helped him to keep in check. Swift had as firm a conviction as did Freud that we are born with wayward tendencies; unlike Freud, though, he saw both religion and civil society as necessary and helpful checks on those wayward tendencies, and he (frequently, but certainly not always) acknowledged that he shared those tendencies with the rest of us. This biography, in two books, Jonathan Swift: Irish Blow-in and Jonathan Swift: Our Dean, will differ from most literary biographies in that it does not aim to show how Swift's life illuminates his writings, but rather how and why Swift wrote in order to live the life he wanted to live. I have liberally quoted Swift's own words in this biography because his inventive expression of ideas, both in his public works and in his private letters, was what has made him a unique and compelling figure in the history of literature. I hope in these two books to come 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:
Intro Contents Preface The Author to the Reader Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations for Frequently Cited Sources PART 1: 1667-1689: BLOWN IN TO IRELAND 1: Born to the Protestant Ascendancy, and to His Own Father 2: Kidnapped 3: Ill Treatment from His Nearest Relations? 4: A Playful but Well-Disciplined Schoolboy 5: Acquiring the Prejudices of Education 6: Parody, Humor, and the Satirical Tripos Tradition PART 2: 1689-1699: PROLONGED ADOLESCENCE 7: Wholesale Protestant Flight 8: The Temples, and Bridget and Esther Johnson 9: Impressing Sir William with Good Penmanship, Skilled Oral Reading, and Being a Good Listener 10: The Battle of the Boyne 11: Befriending Ten-Year-Old Esther Johnson 12: Life Mastered at Age Twenty-Five 13: Choosing His Grandfather's Career over His Father's 14: Your First Job Is Almost Always a Bad One 15: An Equivocating Dodge from Marriage 16: For the Time Being, Writing Trumps Service to the Church 17: Respected Secretary, but Already on the Wrong Side of Thirty PART 3: 1699-1704: WILLOWS, ACCOUNT BOOKS, TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR TWO WOMEN FORMERLY IN SERVICE 18: With the Help of Lady Giffard 19: Professional Independence 20: Jettisoning Jane Waring 21: Rescuing Esther Johnson and Rebecca Dingley from Lives of Service 22: Political Theory, Never Forgetting Human Nature 23: Building a Comfortable Life in Ireland 24: Making a Laracor Cabin a Home 25: Swift the Historian 26: Throwing the Dice with A Tale of a Tub 27: Woops! Rev. Tisdall Proposes to Esther Johnson 28: After Three Prefatory Pieces, the Preface 29: Rethinking Dante's Divine Comedy 30: Digressing to the Core of Our Being 31: The Tale in Context 32: The Spider and the Bee 33: Stirring Up Spirituality 34: Planting Minefields in Your Own Path through Life PART 4: 1704-1710: AFTER A RURAL RETREAT WITH ESTHER JOHNSON: GAINING TRACTION IN THE ENGLISH WORLDS OF POLITICS AND OF LITERATURE 35: Serving the Irish Church 36: The Vicar of Laracor vs. the Freethinking Matthew Tindal 37: Union with the Wrong Dependent Kingdom 38: At the Age of Forty, a Career Jump-Start 39: Spilled Coffee 40: To Mischief Swift 41: The Coffee House Life 42: Sacrificing the Test Act for the First Fruits? 43: The Sensible Moderate's Manifesto 44: Inconveniencing Men of Quality 45: Swift a Projector? 46: Catching a Bit of the Spleen 47: The Injured Lady, Déjà Vu 48: The Queen's Bounty Redux 49: At Play 50: Breathing Space in Ireland 51: Family and Friends PART 5: 1710-1711: POLITICAL AND PERSONAL EXHILERATION 52: Home: England or Ireland? 53: The Politics of September 1710 54: He Understands Me, He Likes Me, He Respects Me (I'm Pretty Sure) 55: Sir Matthew Dudley's Extraordinary Letter 56: Extending the Queen's Bounty to Ireland 57: Suddenly, an Examiner 58: The Art of Political Lying 59. Cuffing the Duke of Marlborough, Slicing the Earl of Wharton 60. A Lost Christmas 61. The Examiner Cross-Examined  62. The Will of the People 63. Character Trumps Politics 64. Mano a Mano with the Duke of Marlborough  65. "Short Sighs" for Hetty and Laracor 66. An Ill-Considered Collection 67. Whom Was Guiscard Trying to Kill? 68. I Begin to Be Heartily Weary  69. Exit, Declaring Victory 70. Walking for Health, Dressing for Court at the Vanhomrighs 71. Heat Wave 72. Relief: Rain, and a Holiday PART 6: 1711-1713: SWIFT'S PEN (AT CONSIDERABLE COST TO SWIFT) TRUMPS MARLBOROUGH'S SWORD 73. Charismatic Jonathan 74. The Good Life at Windsor 75. Helping Jane, Distracting Critics of a Peace, and Some Wrong Steps 76. Every Ounce of Effort for a Peace 77. Twenty-Six Fatal Blackletter Lines 78. Tories and (Just Enough) Whigs Agree on a Peace 79. Success Sabotaged by the Shingles 80. Loyalty Test: Esther Johnson, Alice Hill, and Ester Vanhomrigh 81. Slouching Toward St. Patrick's 82. Tragic Climax 83. Denouement PART 7: 1713-1714: ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH 84. Hessy's Letters Crowd the Laracor Cottage 85. A Man Fit to Serve the Church? 86. Self-Assuring Self-Portraits 87. More Fun than an Author Ought to Have 88. Twenty Guineas for a Conversion 89. Historiographer Royal 90. Wanted: For the First But Not for the Last Time 91. Bad Tory Behavior in Ireland 92. On Most Issues, We Now Agree 93. Political Immobility, Amateur Poetics 94. Swift's Inner Scream Becomes Intolerable 95. Refuge at Letcombe Bassett 96. Yet Another Declaration of Independence 97. Broken Confidence Deja Vu 98. (Almost) Historiographer 99. Oxford/Bolingbroke Infighting Goes Exponential 100. Four Days of High Drama 101. In the Wake of Queen Anne's Death 102. Swearing Allegiance without Enthusiasm 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