The State of Swift Studies 2010

The appearance of volume eight of the Cambridge edition of Swift’s writings (the first to be published), the fifth volume of Münster proceedings, and a festschrift for one of the foremost Swiftians of the twentieth century, makes this a good time to take some stock. The Cambridge edition, with its detailed introductions and annotations, will change the way we read Swift. Like the preceding Münster volumes, Reading Swift (henceforth, RS) is a richly eclectic collection of essays covering several aspects of Swift’s life and career, and Swift’s Travels (henceforth, ST), a festschrift for Claude Rawson, includes studies of Swift’s writings, but also of his antecedents, contemporaries, and followers. Rather than proceeding descriptively through each of the books reviewed here, I have organized this essay conceptually around a variety of themes and issues. The object is to see where we are on several fronts, bibliographical, biographical, and critical. By way of conclusion, I will consider the state of the field more broadly: where are we with Swift, how did we get here, and in what directions are we moving—and should we—now be moving?

Works and Life

Goldgar and Gadd’s volume is the first to appear of the eagerly anticipated, eighteen-volume Cambridge edition of Swift’s writings, which will replace the Herbert Davis sixteen-volume edition of the prose (1939–69), and the Harold Williams three-volume edition of the poetry (1937; rev. 1958). English Political Writings, 1711–1714 includes most of the material printed in volumes six and eight of Davis, though Goldgar and Gadd have de-attributed two works—the 16 January 1713 issue of The Examiner and Her Majestie’s Most Gracious Speech to . . . Parliament, April 9, 1713—and added two others to the Swift canon. If this volume is any indication of the quality of the Cambridge Swift, then the new standard edition will be a dazzling achievement. English Political Writings is handsomely done—it is a beautiful book—and a pleasure to read. It includes an admirably clear introduction to complex political events and provides accessible, lucid footnotes throughout. The textual notes are printed in large type, generously laid out in a format that makes them easy to comprehend; readers of the Davis edition found little help in coping with Swift’s topicalities, but here, the crisp, detailed introduction and annotation supplied by Goldgar are vastly helpful.

Trial collation against the copy texts suggests that this is, as one would expect, a highly accurate representation of the sources. The textual policy of the Cambridge edition is to print “the last authoritative version,” except where works “are bound in tightly to an immediate context of controversy,” in which case the first edition will be used (xi). The political writings of the present volume are, of course, intensely connected to immediate controversies, and Goldgar and Gadd choose copy texts that “represent Swift’s intention at the moment of its most topicality and relevance.” Usually this is the first London edition, though in the case of The Conduct of the Allies, the editors have used the fourth edition, “partly because...