Jonathan Swift

The Reluctant Rebel

Jonathan Swift's world-famous works - from Gulliver's Travels to A Modest Proposal - are unparalleled in their piercing critique of modern society. But Jonathan Swift was a man of great contradictions: a man who satirized the powerful but aspired to political greatness, who mocked men's vanity but held himself in high esteem, a religious moralizer famed for his malice - a man sharply aware of humanity's flaws, but no less susceptible to them.

As with his acclaimed biography of John Donne, John Stubbs paints a vivid portrait of an extraordinary man and a turbulent period of English and Irish history.

Stubbs goes further than any [biographer] previously in recreating the world Swift lived and exploring the duality of his character. ... [Along] with beautifully crafted lines... Another feature of Stubb's biography is its vast historical scholarship. As well as giving us a thoroughly credible Swift, this is a riveting account of English and Irish life in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. If there can be a definitive life of Jonathan Swift, this is it

John Gray, New Statesman

About John Stubbs

Details
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • ISBN: 9780241962909
  • Length: 752 pages
  • Price: £4.99
All editions

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