Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition: E700001-023

A Letter to the Archbishop of Dublin, concerning the Weavers

Author: Jonathan Swift

Background details and bibliographic information

File Description

Electronic edition compiled by Beatrix Färber

Funded by University College, Cork and
Writers of Ireland II Project

2. Second draft, revised and corrected.

Extent of text: 4225 words

Publication

CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College Cork.
College Road, Cork, Ireland—http://www.ucc.ie/celt

(2008) (2010)

Distributed by CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland.
Text ID Number: E700001-023

Availability [RESTRICTED]

Available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of academic research and teaching only.

Notes

Temple Scott notes: on p. 136: ‘The archbishop to whom Swift wrote was Dr William King, for many years his friend. King was a fine patriot and had stood out strongly against the imposition of Wood's Halfpence. In this letter, so characteristic of Swift's attitude towards the condition of Ireland, he aims at a practical and immediate relief. The causes for this condition discussed so ably by Molesworth, Prior and Dobbs in their various treatises are too academic for him. His Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture well illustrates the kind of practical reform Swift insisted on. Yet the insistence was more because of the spirit of independence such a course demanded. To Swift there was no hope for Ireland without a radical change in the spirit of its people. The change meant the assertion of manliness, independence, and strength of character. How to attain these, and how to make the people aware of their power, were always Swift's aims. All his tracts are assertions of and dilations on these themes. If the people were but to insist on wearing their own manufactures, since they were prohibited from exporting them, they would keep their money in the kingdom. Likewise, if they were to deny themselves the indulgence in luxuries, they would not have to send out their money to the countries from which these luxuries were obtained. There were methods ready at hand, but the practice in them would result in the cultivation of that respect for themselves without which a nation is worse than a pauper and lower than a slave.’.

Sources

    Literature mentioned in the notes
  1. Robert Viscount Molesworth, Some considerations for the promoting of agriculture, and employing the poor (Dublin 1723).
  2. Arthur Dobbs, An Essay on the trade and improvement of Ireland (Dublin 1729–1731).
  3. Thomas Prior, A List of the Absentees of Ireland (Dublin 1729).
    Editions and secondary literature
  1. An excellent bibliography covering many aspects of Jonathan Swift's Life, his writings, and criticism, compiled by Lee Jaffe, is available at http://www.jaffebros.com/lee/gulliver/bib/index.html.
  2. J. Bowles Daly (ed.), Ireland in the days of Dean Swift, Irish tracts 1720–1734. (London 1887).
  3. Frederick Ryland (ed.), Swift's Journal to Stella, A.D. 1710–1713. (London 1897).
  4. Temple Scott (ed.), A tale of a tub, and other early works. (London 1897).
  5. Frederick Falkiner, Essays on the portraits of Swift: Swift and Stella. (London 1908).
  6. C. M. Webster, Swift's Tale of a Tub compared with Earlier Satires of the Puritans. Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 47/1 (March 1932) 171–178.
  7. Stephen L. Gwynn, The life and friendships of Dean Swift. (London 1933).
  8. Stanley Lane-Poole (ed.), Selections from the prose writings of Jonathan Swift with a preface and notes. (London 1933).
  9. Ricardo Quintana, The mind and art of Jonathan Swift. (Oxford 1936).
  10. Louis A. Landa, Swift's Economic Views and Mercantilism, English Literary History 10/4 (December 1943) 310–335.
  11. R. Wyse Jackson, Swift and his circle. (Dublin 1945).
  12. Herbert Davis, The Satire of Jonathan Swift (New York 1947).
  13. Martin Price, Swift's rhetorical art. (New York 1953).
  14. Robert C. Elliott, Swift and Dr Eachard. Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 69/5 (December 1954) 1250–1257.
  15. John Middleton Murry, Jonathan Swift: A Critical Biography. (London 1954).
  16. John Middleton Murry, Swift. (London: Published for the British Council and the National Book League 1955).
  17. Kathleen Williams, Swift and the age of compromise. (London 1959).
  18. John M. Bullitt, Jonathan Swift and the anatomy of satire: a study of satiric technique. (Harvard 1961).
  19. Harold Williams (ed.), The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift. (Oxford 1963–65).
  20. Herbert J. Davis (ed.), Jonathan Swift: essays on his satire and other studies. (New York 1964).
  21. Herbert J. Davis (ed.), Gulliver's Travels. [based on the Faulkner edition, Dublin 1735] (Oxford 1965).
  22. Herbert J. Davis (ed.), Swift: poetical works. (New York 1967).
  23. R. B. McDowell, 'Swift as a political thinker'. In: Roger Joseph McHugh and Philip Edwards, Jonathan Swift: 1667–1967, a Dublin tercentenary tribute (Dublin 1967). 176–186.
  24. Brian Vickers (ed.), The world of Jonathan Swift: essays for the tercentenary. (Oxford 1968).
  25. Kathleen Williams, Jonathan Swift. (London 1968).
  26. Morris Golden, The self observed: Swift, Johnson, Wordsworth. (Baltimore 1972.)
  27. Jane M. Snyder, The meaning of 'Musaeo contingens cuncta lepore', Lucretius 1.934, Classical World 66 (1973) 330–334.
  28. Claude Julien Rawson, Gulliver and the gentle reader: studies in Swift and our time. (London and Boston 1973).
  29. A. L. Rowse, Jonathan Swift, major prophet. (London 1975).
  30. Alexander Norman Jeffares, Jonathan Swift. (London 1976).
  31. Clive T. Probyn, Jonathan Swift: the contemporary background. (Manchester 1978).
  32. Clive T. Probyn (ed.), The art of Jonathan Swift. (London 1978).
  33. Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The man, his works, and the age (three volumes). (London 1962–83).
  34. David M. Vieth (ed.), Essential articles for the study of Jonathan Swift's poetry. (Hamden 1984).
  35. James A. Downie, Jonathan Swift, political writer. (London 1985).
  36. Frederik N. Smith (ed.), The genres of Gulliver's travels. (London 1990).
  37. James Kelly, 'Jonathan Swift and the Irish Economy in the 1720s', Eighteenth-century Ireland: Iris an dá chultúr 6 (1991) 7–36.
  38. Joseph McMinn (ed.), Swift's Irish pamphlets. (Gerrards Cross 1991).
  39. Robert Mahony, Jonathan Swift: the Irish identity. (Yale 1995).
  40. Christopher Fox, Walking Naboth's vineyards: new studies of Swift (University of Notre Dame Ward-Philips lectures in English language and literature, Vol. 13). (Notre Dame/Indiana 1995).
  41. Claude Rawson (ed.), Jonathan Swift: a collection of critical essays. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jeresey, 1995).
  42. Michael Stanley, Famous Dubliners: W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, Wolfe Tone, Oscar Wilde, Edward Carson. (Dublin 1996).
  43. Daniel Carey, 'Swift among the freethinkers'. Eighteenth-century Ireland: Iris an dá chultúr, 12 (1997) 89–99.
  44. Victoria Glendinning, Jonathan Swift. (London 1998).
  45. Aileen Douglas; Patrick Kelly; Ian Campbell Ross, (eds.). Locating Swift: essays from Dublin on the 250th anniversary of the death of Jonathan Swift, 1667–1745. (Dublin 1998).
  46. Bruce Arnold, Swift: an illustrated life. (Dublin 1999).
  47. Nigel Wood (ed.), Jonathan Swift. (London and New York 1999).
  48. Christopher J. Fauske, Jonathan Swift and the Church of Ireland, 1710–24 (Portland/Oregon 2001).
  49. David George Boyce; Robert Eccleshall; Vincent Geoghegan (eds.), Political discourse in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ireland. (Basingstoke and New York 2001).
  50. Ann Cline Kelly, Jonathan Swift and popular culture: myth, media and the man. (Basingstoke 2002).
  51. Dirk F. Passmann and Heinz J. Vienken, The library and reading of Jonathan Swift: a bio-bibliographical handbook. 4 vols. (Frankfurt 2003).
  52. Mark McDayter, 'The haunting of St James's Library: librarians, literature, and The Battle of the Books'. Huntington Library Quarterly, 66:1–2 (2003) 1–26.
  53. Frank T. Boyle, 'Jonathan Swift' [A companion to satire]. In: Ruben Quintero (ed.), A companion to satire (Oxford 2007) 196–211.
  54. Harry Whitaker, C. U. M. Smith and Stanley Finger (eds.), Explorations of the Brain, Mind and Medicine in the Writings of Jonathan Swift. (Springer (US) 2007).
  55. Basil Williams, Stanhope. A Study in Eighteenth-Century War and Diplomacy. (Oxford 1932).
    The edition used in the digital edition
  1. Temple Scott, A Letter to the Archbishop of Dublin, concerning the Weavers in The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift D. D., Ed. Temple Scott. , London, George Bell & Sons (1905) volume 7: Historical and political tracts—Irishpage 136–143

Encoding

Project Description

CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts

Sampling Declaration

The text covers pages 136–143.

Editorial Declaration

Correction

Text has been proof-read once.

Normalization

The electronic text represents the edited text (‘based on the original manuscript, and collated with that of Scott's second edition of Swift's collected works’). The editor's notes are tagged note type="auth" n="".

Quotation

Direct speech is rendered q.

Hyphenation

When a hyphenated word (hard or soft) crosses a line break, the break is marked after the completion of the hyphenated word (and punctuation mark).

Segmentation

div0=the letter. Paragraphs are marked; page-breaks are marked pb n="".

Interpretation

Names of persons are tagged. Terms and phrases from languages other than English are tagged.

Profile Description

Created: By Jonathan Swift (April 1729)

Use of language

Language: [EN] The text is in English.
Language: [LA] One phrase is in Latin.
Language: [IT] One word is in Italian.

Revision History