Jonathan Swift

October 3, 2016
In this engaging, though at times excessively detailed, biography, Stubbs (Donne: The Reformed Soul) succeeds in portraying famed author Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) with all his contradictions. Swift, best known for Gulliver’s Travels, was an irreverent social critic and a moralist, the dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, and “a socialite in the parlor.” Born in Dublin to displaced English parents, he would always insist he was English and, as Stubbs notes, saw no contradiction between urging the native Irish to Anglicize their language and customs and opposing English tyranny over Ireland. One of his day’s most prominent political writers, Swift supported the Anglican establishment yet felt an affinity with the poor, mentally ill, and oppressed, and his attitudes toward women could be, as Stubbs shows, both enlightened and repressive. Stubbs covers the English Civil War, which displaced Swift’s parents; the Glorious Revolution, which led Swift to move to England; and the ascension of George I, which sent him back to Ireland. He also touches on the animosity between Catholics and Protestants, the printing and bookselling industry, Swift’s literary peers, and much more. Stubbs’s descriptions are vivid, and his literary analyses exacting and thought-provoking, but one wishes he had been more selective in contextual detail. Nevertheless, Stubbs excels at showing how Swift became “the most notorious writer of his day.” Agent: Toby Eady, Toby Eady Associates (U.K.).

Starred review from October 15, 2016
A resplendent biography of the "most notorious writer of his day."There's no shortage of books about the life of Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), but this one might just dissuade others from writing another--if Leo Damrosch's excellent 2013 biography didn't already do so. (Stubbs acknowledges Damrosch's achievement.) In this monumental biography, Stubbs (Reprobates: The Cavaliers of the English Civil War, 2011, etc.) presents a classic man-and-his-times narrative, recounting in remarkable detail the complex life Swift led as an orphan born in Dublin who lived mostly in England but returned to Ireland in 1713 as a "reluctant rebel." He was fond of saying that he was "stolen from England when a child and brought over to Ireland in a band-box." Stubbs' Swift is a practical joker who rarely smiled and possessed a "commanding, patriarchal air." Drawing extensively on Swift's writings and the histories of the time, Stubbs recounts the author's upbringing by a "well-connected family," fine education, and employment in England as a secretary for a retired diplomat, Sir William Temple. It was then that he met the young Esther Johnson, who would be his friend for life and help him deal with his life-long vertigo, tinnitus, and nausea. Stubbs disputes rumors that he secretly married her. While in England, Swift demonstrated his "power as a fabulist" and master satirist, penning The Battle of the Books and A Tale of a Tub. He begrudgingly returned to Dublin to serve as dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, where he churned out anonymously written, scathing political pamphlets, the bleak and sardonic masterpiece A Modest Proposal, and Gulliver's Travels, a "phenomenon." Stubbs' in-depth analysis of the vast cultural impact of Swift's many works is impressive, as are his portraits of Swift's literary acquaintances. This astute portrait of a complicated man who wanted to defend his homeland and to "vex the world rather than divert it" is truly masterful. A rich and sweeping story superbly told.

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Starred review from January 1, 2017
Like John Donne: The Reformed Soul (2007), Stubbs' second massive biography is the product of thorough research and penetration into his subject's writing. A clergyman-author as Donne was, Swift (16671745), Irish by birth, was driven by a deep sense of displacement from England, his rightful homeland, he felt, and he spent half his life trying to take root there. But he often returned to Dublin, where he became dean of Saint Patrick's Cathedral, came to abhor England's abuse of Ireland, and sought to influence English policy through his exceedingly sharp satirical writing, the earliest masterpiece of which is the high church, anti-Dissenter A Tale of a Tub. Rising with the Tories during Queen Anne's reign, he fell with them when Walpole's Whigs triumphed. Obliged to stay in Ireland, he then so fiercely prosecuted justice for the Irish that his birthday was marked with bonfires, rallies, and other hoopla. Dour and severe, he was enormously generous to the needy. Though his dearest friends were women, he never married, never dallied. Gulliver's Travels made him internationally famous, and his excoriating 1729 satire, A Modest Proposal, has shocked the world ever since with its savage irony. Though his last years were sad, his trajectory as a literary artist had been steadily upward, as Stubbs' ever more engrossing, superlatively literate exposition demonstrates.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2016

Even the acerbic Swift might be pleased that his biographer is the Oxford- and Cambridge-educated Stubbs, whose John Donne was awarded the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award and short-listed for the Costa Biography Award.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2017

In 1688, Jonathan Swift was disciplined at Trinity College for insulting a junior dean and inciting tumults. He would continue that behavior for the rest of his life. This biography by Stubbs (John Donne: The Reformed Soul) places the tumultuous St. Patrick's Cathedral dean within his times, beginning with the role his loyalist grandfather played during the English Civil War. Through psychological probing of Swift's life, Stubbs also seeks to pluck out the heart of Swift's many contractions this book reveals: Irish patriot who denied his Irish birth; misogynist whom two women followed to Dublin; fastidious writer of scatological verses; conservative rebel, committed Tory who hated party politics; Anglophile who opposed English colonial rule in Ireland. Despite its length, this book does not supersede Irvin Ehrenpreis's three-volume work on Swift. Stubbs disappointingly offers little analysis of Swift's writings and seems tone deaf to the irony of Polite Conversation and Directions to Servants. VERDICT A generally sound if at times overlong introduction to Swift and his age, especially strong on historical and political background. [See Prepub Alert, 7/18/16.]--Joseph Rosenblum, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.