The Basic Writings of Jonathan Swift (Modern Library Classics)

This edition of Jonathan Swift’s basic works contains the authoritative texts of all his most important prose writings as well as many shorter pieces, poems, and letter extracts. Included are Gulliver’s Travels, Swift’s devastating picture of human nature and human foibles; A Tale of a Tub, his scathing attack on the intellectual culture and religious excesses of his time; The Battel of the Books, his defense of the classical tradition; and the unforgettable Modest Proposal, in which he proposes that the Irish, in order to avoid starvation, eat their children.

Claude Rawson is the Maynard Mack Professor of English at Yale University. His most recent book is God, Gulliver, and Geno-cide: Barbarism and the European Imagination, 1492–1945. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Ian Higgins is a senior lecturer in English at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. He is the author of, most recently, Swift’s Politics: A Study in Disaffection.