Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: When was Swift's A Tale of a Tub first published?
A Tale of a Tub was the first major work written by Jonathan Swift, arguably his most difficult satire and perhaps his most masterly. The Tale is a prose parody divided into sections each delving into the morals and ethics of the English. Composed between 1694 and 1697, it was eventually published in 1704. It was long regarded as a satire on religion, and has famously been attacked for that, starting with William Wotton.[1][2]
In 1704, Jonathan Swift (Irish satirist) published "A Tale of a Tub" and "The Battle of the Books" and John Dennis published his "Grounds of Criticism in Poetry". "The Battle of the Books" begins with a reference to the use of a glass (which, in those days, would mean either a mirror or a magnifying glass) as a comparison to the use of satire. Swift is, in this, very much the child of his age, thinking in terms of science and satire at one and the same time. Swift often patterned his satire after Juvenal, the classical satirist. He was one of the first English novelists and also a political campaigner. His satirical writing springs from a body of liberal thought which produced not only books but also political pamphlets for public distribution. Swift's writing represents the new, the different and the modern attempting to change the world by parodying the ancient and incumbent. "The Battle of the Books" is a short writing which demonstrates his position very neatly.
An important factor in the reception of Swift's work is that the narrator of the work is an extremist in every direction. Consequently, he can no more construct a sound allegory than he can finish his digressions without losing control (eventually confessing that he is insane).[16] For a Church of England reader, the allegory of the brothers provides small comfort. Martin has a corrupted faith, one full of holes and still with ornaments on it. His only virtue is that he avoids the excesses of his brothers, but the original faith is lost to him. Readers of the Tale have picked up on this unsatisfactory resolution to both "parts" of the book, and A Tale of a Tub has often been offered up as evidence of Swift's misanthropy.[17]
Jonathan Swift worked for William Temple during the time of the controversy, and Swift's "A Tale of a Tub" (1703/1705) takes part in the debate. From its first publication, Swift added a short satire entitled "The Battle of the Books" to the "Tale of a Tub." In this piece, there is an epic battle fought in a library when various books come alive and attempt to settle the arguments between moderns and ancients. In Swift's satire, he skilfully manages to avoid saying which way victory fell. He portrays the manuscript as having been damaged in places, thus leaving the end of the battle up to the reader.
Ehrenpreis, Irvin. Swift: The Man, his Works, and the Age: Mr Swift and his Contemporaries. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962. Ehrenpreis, Irvin. Swift: The Man, his Works, and the Age: Dr Swift. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1967. Elias, A. C., Jr. Swift at Moor Park: Problems in Biography and Criticism. Philadelphia: U. Penn. Press, 1982. ISBN0-8122-7822-4 Farrell, John. "Swift and the Satiric Absolute." Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau. New York: Cornell UP, 2006. ISBN0-8014-4410-1 Guilhamet, Leon. Satire and the Transformation of Genre. Philadelphia: U. Penn. Press, 1981. ISBN0-8122-8053-9 Landa, Louis A. Essays in Eighteenth-century Literature. Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1980. ISBN0-691-06449-0 McKeon, Michael. The Origins of the English Novel 1600–1740. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1987. ISBN0-8018-3291-8 Rawson, Claude. The Character of Swift's Satire: A Revised Focus. Newark: U. Delaware Press, 1983. ISBN0-87413-209-6 Ross, Angus and David Wooley, eds. A Tale of a Tub and Other Works: Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-283593-2.
The Tale was originally published in 1704 by John Nutt. Swift had used Benjamin Tooke previously when publishing for Sir William Temple. He would use Tooke for both the fifth edition of the Tale (1710) and later works. Tooke's successor, Benjamin Motte, published Swift's Gulliver's Travels. This difference in printer is only one of the things that led to debate over authorship of the work.
Although today very little of this debate remains, questions of the authorship of the Tale occupied many notable critics both in the 18th and 19th centuries. Famously, Samuel Johnson claimed that A Tale of a Tub was a work of true genius (in contrast to Gulliver's Travels where once one imagines "big people and little people" the rest is easy) and too good to be Jonathan Swift's. In the 19th century, many critics who saw misanthropy and madness in Jonathan Swift's later work wished to reject the Tale as his. In a way, a critic's view on who wrote the Tale reflected that critic's politics. Swift was such a powerful champion of Tory, or anti-Whig, causes that fans of the Tale were eager to attribute the book to another author from nearly the day of its publication.
One feature of Curll's career, and the one that most cemented his reputation through the ages, was the unauthorized publication of works originally produced by another house, often against the author's wishes. Usually, Curll stayed just across the legal line from piracy, but not always. In 1707, Curll announced in the newspapers that he was going to publish "Poems on Several Occasions" by Matthew Prior. Jacob Tonson had the sole rights to Prior's works, but Curll published anyway. In 1716, Curll "again" announced his intent to publish Matthew Prior's works, and Prior himself wrote letters of protest to the newspapers. The quarrel with Tonson, and Prior's objections, only served as publicity, however, and Curll published the book anyway. In 1710, he printed up Jonathan Swift's "Meditation Upon a Broomstick." He also that year wrote a "key" to other Swift works, and in 1713 he produced a key to "A Tale of a Tub." Swift was angry at Curll for revealing his authorship of the works (as Swift was ascending in the Church of England), but he was also amused at the dullness of Curll's explication of his works. He wrote to Alexander Pope that dunces like Curll were tools for a satirist, that they were valuable in their way. Having gotten into the habit of sapping Swift, Curll did not relent, especially after Swift incorporated Curll's notes (without permission) into the apparatus of "A Tale of a Tub." In 1726, Curll produced a wildly inaccurate "key" to Swift's "Gulliver's Travels". Another alleged case of unauthorized publication came with the poet Edward Young, who sent a poem to Curll for publication, with a letter of solicitation. When the poem was published in 1717, Young took out an ad claiming that the poem and letter were forgeries. In fact, the poem was in praise of a politician who had lost place, and Young's letter was authentic.
Stylistically and in sentiment, the Tale is undeniably Swift's. Most important in this regard is the narrative pose and the creation of narrative parody.[21] The dramatic pretense of writing as a character is in keeping with Jonathan Swift's lifelong practice. Furthermore, Thomas Swift has left few literary remains. Thomas Swift's authorship is examined in the summary of A. C. Guthkelch and D. Nichol Smith's A Tale of a Tub (1920 and 1958), where they say, "all the evidence for Thomas Swift's participation in the Tale... [is] nothing but rumour and [Edmund] Curll's Key."[22] Indeed, in 1710 Swift had the fifth edition republished by Tooke, and he explained in a letter how the rumour had been started. He said that, when the publication initially took place, Swift was abroad in Ireland and "that little Parson-cousin of mine" "affected to talk suspiciously, as if he had some share in it."[23] In other words, anonymity conspired with Thomas Swift's desire for fame to create the confusion. Afterward, only critical preference seems to account for anyone holding Thomas Swift the author.
A Tale of a Tub is an enormous parody with a number of smaller parodies within it. Many critics have followed Swift's biographer Irvin Ehrenpreis in arguing that there is no single, consistent narrator in the work.[7] One difficulty with this position, however, is that if there is no single character posing as the author, then it is at least clear that nearly all of the "personae" employed by Swift for the parodies are so much alike that they function as a single identity. In general, whether a modern reader would view the book as consisting of dozens of impersonations or a single one, Swift writes the Tale through the pose of a Modern or New Man. See the abridged discussion of the "Ancients and Moderns", below, for more on the nature of the "modern man" in Swift's day.[8]
Even though Swift published the "Tale" as he left Temple's service, it was conceived earlier, and the book is a salvo in one of Temple's battles. Swift's general polemic concerns an argument (the "Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns") that had been over for nearly ten years by the time the book was published. The "Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns" was a French academic debate of the early 1690s, occasioned by Fontenelle arguing that modern scholarship had allowed modern man to surpass the ancients in knowledge. Temple argued against this position in his "On Ancient and Modern Learning" (where he provided the first English formulation of the commonplace that modern critics see more only because they are dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants), and Temple's somewhat naive essay prompted a small flurry of responses. Among others, two men who took the side opposing Temple were Richard Bentley (classicist and editor) and William Wotton (critic).
Elizabeth Nutt ("c." 1666 – November 1746) and John Nutt (? – 1716) were printers and booksellers and distributors in London in the early 18th century. John Nutt's most famous publication was the first three editions of Jonathan Swift's "A Tale of a Tub", but he and Elizabeth were important both as publishers and sellers of many works of English law and literature.
Born of English parents in Ireland, Jonathan Swift was working as Sir William Temple's secretary at the time he composed A Tale of a Tub (1694–1697).[13] The publication of the work coincided with Swift's striking out on his own, having despaired of getting a good "living" from Temple or Temple's influence. There is speculation about what caused the rift between Swift and his employer, but, as A. C. Elias persuasively argues, it seems that the final straw came with Swift's work on Temple's Letters. Swift had been engaged to translate Temple's French correspondence, but Temple, or someone close to Temple, edited the French text to make Temple seem both prescient and more fluent. Consequently, the letters and the translations Swift provided did not gibe, and, since Swift could not accuse Temple of falsifying his letters, and because the public would never believe that the retired state minister had lied, Swift came across as incompetent.
The work appeared anonymously in 1704. It was Swift's habit to publish anonymously throughout his career, partially as a way of protecting his career, and partially his person.[20] As a struggling churchman, Swift needed the support of nobles to gain a living. Additionally, nobles were still responsible for Church affairs in the House of Lords, so his political effectiveness in church affairs depended upon the lords. Swift needed to be at some distance from the sometimes bawdy and scatological work that he wrote.
During his visits to England in these years, Swift published A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books (1704) and began to gain a reputation as a writer. This led to close, lifelong friendships with Alexander Pope, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot, forming the core of the Martinus Scriblerus Club (founded in 1713).
Robert Hendrickson notes in his book British Literary Anecdotes that "Swift was always partial to his strikingly original The Tale of a Tub (1704). On reading the work again in later years, he exclaimed 'Good God! What a genius I had when I wrote that book!'"[24]
The digressions individually frustrate readers who expect a clear purpose. Each digression has its own topic, and each is an essay on its particular sidelight. In his biography of Swift, Ehrenpreis argued that each digression is an impersonation of a different contemporary author. This is the "persona theory," which holds that the Tale is not one parody, but rather a series of parodies, arising out of chamber performance in the Temple household. Prior to Ehrenpreis, some critics had argued that the narrator of the Tale is a character, just as the narrator of a novel would be. Given the evidence of A. C. Elias about the acrimony of Swift's departure from the Temple household, evidence from Swift's Journal to Stella about how uninvolved in the Temple household Swift had been, and the number of repeated observations about himself by the Tale's author, it seems reasonable to propose that the digressions reflect a single type of man, if not a particular character.[10]
Jonathan Swift first used the phrase in his mock-heroic prose satire, "The Battle of the Books" (1704), a defense of Classical learning (1704), which he published as a prolegomenon to his "A Tale of a Tub". It gained widespread currency in the Victorian era, when English poet and essayist Matthew Arnold picked it up as the title of the first section of his 1869 book "Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism", where "sweetness and light" stands for beauty and intelligence, the two key components of an excellent culture.
As has recently been argued by Michael McKeon, Swift might best be described as a severe sceptic, rather than a Whig, Tory, empiricist, or religious writer. He supported the Classics in the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, and he supported the established church and the aristocracy, because he felt the alternatives were worse. He argued elsewhere that there is nothing inherently virtuous about a noble birth, but its advantages of wealth and education made the aristocrat a better ruler than the equally virtuous but unprivileged commoner. A Tale of a Tub is a perfect example of Swift's devastating intellect at work. By its end, little seems worth believing in.
A Tale of a Tub is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy written by Ben Jonson. The last of his plays to be staged during his lifetime, "A Tale of a Tub" was performed in 1633 and published in 1640 in the second folio of Jonson's works.
The first, second, and third editions of the Tale appeared in 1704; the fifth edition came out in 1710. In "The Apology for the &c.", Swift indicates that he originally gave his publisher a preliminary copy of the work, while he kept a blotted copy at his own hand and lent other copies including one to Thomas Swift, Jonathan's "parson cousin". As a consequence, the first edition appeared with many errors. The second edition was a resetting of the type. The third edition was a reprint of the second, with corrections, and the fourth edition contained corrections of the third.
If Swift hoped that the Tale of a Tub would win him a living, he would have been disappointed. Swift himself believed that the book cost him any chance of high position within the church. It is most likely, though, that Swift was not seeking a clerical position with the Tale. Instead, it was probably meant to establish him as a literary and political figure and to strike out a set of positions that would win the notice of influential men. This it did. As a consequence of this work, and his activity in Church causes, Swift became a familiar of Robert Harley, future Earl of Oxford, and Henry St. John, the future Viscount Bolingbroke. When the Tories gained the government in 1710, Swift was rewarded for his work. By 1713–14, however, the Tory government had fallen, and Swift was made Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin—an appointment he considered an exile.
During the Restoration the print revolution began to change every aspect of British society. It became possible for anyone to spend a small amount of money and have his or her opinions published as a broadsheet, and to gain access to the latest discoveries in science, literature, and political theory, as books became less expensive and digests and "indexes" of the sciences grew more numerous. The difficulty lay in discerning truth from falsehood, credible claims from impossible one.[11] Swift writes A Tale of a Tub in the guise of a narrator who is excited and gullible about what the new world has to offer, and feels that he is quite the equal or superior of any author who ever lived because he, unlike them, possesses 'technology' and newer opinions. Swift seemingly asks the question of what a person with no discernment but with a thirst for knowledge would be like, and the answer is the narrator of Tale of a Tub.
Swift, Jonathan. Tale of a Tub, to which is added The battle of the books, and the Mechanical operation of the spirit. By Jonathan Swift. Together with The history of Martin, Wotton's Observations upon the Tale of a tub, Curll's Complete key, &c. A. C. Guthkelch and D. Nichol Smith, editors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd edition 1958. Swift, Jonathan. A Tale of a Tub and Other Works. Marcus Walsh, editor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
A Tale of a Tub is divided between various forms of digression and sections of a "tale". The "tale", or narrative, is an allegory of three brothers, Peter, Martin, and Jack, as they attempt to make their way in the world. Each brother represents one of the primary branches of Christianity in the West. This part of the book is a pun on "tub", which Alexander Pope says was a common term for a Dissenter's pulpit, and a reference to Swift's own position as a clergyman. Peter (named for Saint Peter) stands in for the Roman Catholic Church.[4] Jack (named for John Calvin, but whom Swift also connects to John of Leyden) represents the various dissenting Protestant churches such as Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Congregationalists and Anabaptists.[4] The third brother, middle born and middle standing, is Martin (named for Martin Luther), whom Swift uses to represent the 'via media' of the Church of England.[4] The brothers have inherited three wonderfully satisfactory coats (representing religious practice) by their father (representing God), and they have his will (representing the Bible) to guide them. Although the will says that the brothers are forbidden from making any changes to their coats, they do nearly nothing but alter their coats from the start. In as much as the will represents the Bible and the coat represents the practice of Christianity, the allegory of the narrative is supposed to be an apology for the Anglican church's refusal to alter its practice in accordance with Puritan demands and its continued resistance to ally with the Roman church.[5]