The Writings of Jonathan Swift (Norton Critical Edition) [Paperback]

Jonathan Swift (Author), Robert Greenberg (Editor), William Piper (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0393094154 | ISBN-13: 978-0393094152 | Publication Date: May 17, 1973 | Edition: annotated edition

This volume contains the complete and definitive texts of virtually all of Swift's major works, as well as a generous selection of his poetry and other writings.

Included are Gulliver's Travels, A Tale of a Tub, The Battel of the Books, A Discourse Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, numerous essays and other prose pieces, and poems, among them several that are rarely reprinted. All of the texts are scrupulously edited and annotated.

Backgrounds includes correspondence between Swift and members of his circle and observations by his contemporaries.

Criticism offers evaluations by Norman O. Brown, Samuel Holt Monk, Allan Bloom, Nigel Dennis, Edward W. Rosenheim, Jr., A. E. Dyson, William Frost, C. J. Rawson, Kathleen Williams, Martin Price, Robert M. Adams, and Jay Arnold Levine.

An Annotated Bibliography guides the reader to important works for further study.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert A. Greenberg was Professor of English at Queens College, City University of New York, and taught at Cornell and New York University. He was co-author of Robert Frost: An Introduction and Modern Essays: A Rhetorical Approach, and editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Gulliver's Travels.


William B. Piper is Professor Emeritus of English at Rice University. He has taught at Cornell University, the University of Louisville, and Western Reserve University. He has published Laurence Sterne, The Heroic Couplet, The Literature of Common Sense, and many scholarly articles.

Product Details

• Paperback: 752 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; annotated edition edition (May 17, 1973)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393094154
• ISBN-13: 978-0393094152
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #178,022 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars You might want to choose a different anthology., July 20, 2006

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MV - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Writings of Jonathan Swift (Norton Critical Edition) (Paperback)

This anthology will serve those who don't care about the information that footnotes would provide, and those who already have that information in thier heads.

For students who want to give Swift a serious and informed reading, this edition is not ideal. Footnotes are few, and there's little editorial help in navigating the complex historical, political, and religious issues relevant to the text. Without an understanding of those issues the many of the works included are largely unintelligable and therefore a lot less interesting. For the price of a Norton, one expects a bit more padding to come with the text.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very thorough collection, September 12, 2007

By 

Daniel Gunter (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Writings of Jonathan Swift (Norton Critical Edition) (Paperback)

In contrast with the principal competing collection of Swift's work (i.e., the Oxford Classics collection), the Norton Critical Edition contains all of "Gulliver's Travels," "A Tale of a Tub" (my favorite of Swift's works), and "The Battle of the Books," along with a solid selection of other writings in prose and poetry. Given the breadth of the selection, it is not surprising that this edition does not have an extensive critical apparatus. But it does have enough background material and footnotes to make the texts generally useful to the modern reader, and other materials are readily available. This may be more of a "reader's edition" than a truly "critical edition," but it is still a valuable edition.