The Library and Reading of Jonathan Swift: A Bio-Bibliographical Handbook by Dirk F. Passmann and Heinz J. Vienken (review)

294 provoking.’’ He proceeded to give an account of how Motte, ‘‘to avoyd offence,’’ got ‘‘Mr [Andrew] Took the Clergyman deceased’’ to make ‘‘those alterations and insertions .’’ I have instanced Mr. Woolley’s ‘‘attempt, by way of commentary,’’ to show how Swift sought to amend the published text of the Travels between 1726 and 1735, for two reasons: first, it effectively refutes those who, believing Swift’s complaints about Motte’s arranging for the original MS to be censored ‘‘to avoyd offence’’ are part of an elaborate game, argue that the first edition accurately represents his intentions; second , and perhaps more importantly, it demonstrates, for those interested in Swift and his writings, that Mr. Woolley’s notes are a model of information and erudition. J. A. Downie Goldsmiths College, London DIRK F. PASSMANN and HEINZ J. VIENKEN. The Library and Reading of Jonathan Swift: A Bio-Bibliographical Handbook. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2003. Part I, Swift’s Library in Four Volumes. Vol. 1, pp. xxi ⫹ 776; vol. 2, pp. 777–1554; vol. 3, pp. 1555–1995; vol. 4, Abbreviated References, Facsimile Reproductions, and Indices , pp. 421. $232.95. At more than twenty-four hundred pages and four volumes, this first part of The Library and Reading of Jonathan Swift is impressive. Entries provide not only the author’s name and the title of all the works listed as being in Swift’s library at various times from 1697/1698 to 1746, but also a description of the work’s contents; the inscriptions and marginalia they contain; mentions of the text by Swift; remarks about the author and his works; a listing of editions and translations; and finally an often extensive annotated list of recent scholarship on the subject. Many of the remarks about authors’ lives and works include material taken from Moreri’s Dictionary. The result at its best amounts to a portrait of the mental world of an English intellectual and man of letters of the late seventeenth century taken from descriptions of the almost seven hundred books, many of them multivolume, he is known to have possessed. The work will be of most use to Swift scholars in the accounts it gives of obscure authors such as Ctesias, Curtius Rufus, and Florio (among the classics); Baronius and Flacius (among ecclesiastical historians); Mendes Pinto, Schouten, and Ulloa (among travel writers). Notwithstanding its usefulness, this first four-volume part of the work could be much shorter and just as useful. The extraordinarily detailed collations in many entries will be of interest almost exclusively to library cataloguers and book collectors. In addition, the frequent citations from Moreri’s Dictionary constitute something of a problem, considering that Bayle’s corrections of Moreri were already published in 1697. It is true that Swift owned and annotated a copy of Moreri, and we have no record of his having owned Bayle’s Dictionary; still, it seems a stretch to cite Moreri as an authoritative voice of the time on so many subjects. Some of Swift’s marginal annotations on Moreri may have been critical of him, as were Bayle’s articles. The entries for some of the most important figures also include questionable sections . For example, the entry on Virgil notes his extreme importance for Swift, and 295 includes an exhaustive list of the epigraphs Swift drew from Virgil’s works, a helpful resource. However, the article concludes with an annotated Bibliography running to ten double-column pages of modern scholarship on the Roman writer. Annotated Bibliographies of similar length conclude the entries for Seneca, Spenser, Cervantes, and Erasmus. Few if any researchers will turn to a work on Swift’s library to obtain such contemporary bibliographical information. Considering the learning and insight in the discussions, there is reason to look forward to the second part, which will be more focused on the uses Swift made of the works that he read. Frank Palmeri University of Miami The Reception of Laurence Sterne in Europe, ed. Peter de Voogd and John Neubauer. London: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004. Pp. xxv ⫹ 332. $250. This collection of fourteen essays is part of the ‘‘Athlone Critical Tradition Series: The Reception of British Authors in Europe’’; a volume on Virginia...