Jonathan Swift Guide Biographical Critical by Alston R C (1 results)

Cloth, gilt spine-title, 4to, xxviii, [1], 67 pp, typescript (on rectos only). The first bibliographical work by one of the great bibliographers of the 20th century - Robin Carfrae Alston (1933-2011) was to be a driving force behind the creation of the English Short-Title Catalogue but is most remembered for his vast Bibliography of the English Language, an astonishing one-man achievement. His determine to approach bibliographical problems in his own way is already demonstrated in this work. From the preface; "My purpose in doing this work is simply this: to provide the student of Swift with a handy, compact guide to most of the available material, whether it be critical, bio- graphical, or simply expository, that has been done on Swift during the past two hundred and fifty years. But it does so in a way that, I think, has never been attempted before, for whereas standard works of a bibliographical kind are generally indexed according to the author's name, this bibliography has been arranged according to the "subject,B so to speak. This means that a student interested in critical work done on, say, Gulliver's Travels has simply to turn to the chapter entitled Gulliver's Travels: General Criticism and Analysis, and he will find therein most of the criticism dealing with that subject, arranged in the first section according to the author's name, and in the second section according to the title of the periodical in which the criticism is to be found", Covers heavily fingermarked, otherwise Very Good. Signed by the author on the title-page.