Jonathan Swift

This is a superb biography, a perfect balance of scholarship and story-telling. Damrosch has skilfully managed that most difficult challenge of literary history writing--to be both erudite and entertaining, comprehensive and compelling. His style is at times almost novelistic, and like a good novel, "Swift" is hard to put down. The life and work of this complex and controversial writer is presented with a depth of psychological insight and a humanity of judgment that make the reader feel that it's possible to know the man--his rage, his humor, his boundless energy--as well as his contemporaries could have, and sometimes better. We enjoy the privilege (and the often guilty pleasure) of peeling back the layers of time and secrecy guarding the private life of a very public man. Damrosch's approach to the many mysteries of Swift's life and character, including his origins, his political and artistic motivations, and especially his relationships with women, is subtle and suggestive rather than didactic. Unlike some previous biographers, Damrosch doesn't insist on his own opinions and interpretations, but presents the known facts (some discussed here for the first time) and lays out all the possibilities, leaving us to decide what to believe. The overall effect is of entering a world quite unlike our own, yet disturbingly familiar, and meeting a figure fully realized and three-dimensional, one who inspires our admiration and awe, as well as our delight.

Damrosch's biography of Swift is well-written, comprehensive, and enjoyably readable. It's a tough task, writing a biography of Swift: There is no documentation for considerable amounts of Swift's life, and even confirmed facts (such as long standing relationships) often lack the historiographic data to know much beyond what meager surviving correspondence can reveal. One of the book's strengths is something that Damrosch does *not* do. He does not fill out details with surmise, as some other leading Swift biographers have done, particularly from psychoanalytic perspectives. He offers a critical and biographical picture that balances some earlier and often eccentric work.Apart from the clear presentation of what we do know of Swift's life, one of the book's great strengths is its integration into the story of these other biographical and critical writings. A second strength is the richness of texture about the Great Britain (especially London) and Ireland of the 17th and 18th centuries.Overall, I found the book to be a substantial and rewarding contribution to our understanding of Swift.

I have always been interested in Swift; in fact, one of my major academic fields is Augustan Satire. One of my students sent me an email asking what I thought of this book and, learning that professor Damrosch had published a new biography of Swift, I promptly got on Amazon and bought it on Kindle. The next week, about half way through the book, my sister's neurologist (who was born in Ireland) asked me if I had heard about the book and we had a great discussion as we were leaving the consultation on what I thought. What I thought was that this book has a different, and somewhat less rosy, take on Swift's biography. The Swift he pictures might not be as attractive as Ehrenpreis's Swift, but Damrosch's Swift seems to fit better than the writer I discovered when my fourth grade teacher read Gulliver's Travels aloud for us when we couldn't go out for recess during a long, cold Northern New Jersey winter.

Beautifully written in an accessible, conversational style. Yet also based on detailed research and profound scholarly knowledge of the period when Swift lived. Damrosch makes Swift come alive as a person, but without ever speculating beyond the bounds of what is actually known about him (for some periods of his life not much). A little more about some of his works, in particular Gulliver's Travels might have been good. But this is already a long biography and not a work of literary criticism, so perhaps the author felt that more detailed commentary on Gulliver could be left to others.

Extremely well written and researched. Jonathan Swift was a fascinating character and the style with which this book is presented, that is facts are documented, hearsay and rumors are identified as such and conclusions are drawn when appropriate, so that it is a very enjoyable and entertaining read.

This very well written biography focuses almost exclusively on Swift's personal life. There is precious little on what he wrote. The famed essay, A Modest Proposal, for example, gets about 1 or 2 pages. There is no discussion of how Swift's works has been view since his death. For me, a biography should illuminate both the personal life and what made the person famous. If you are already familiar with Swift and his body of work, however, and just want to find out about the man behind the biting wit, this is an excellent book. I enjoyed reading it, but as someone unfamiliar with his works (If I read Gulliver's Travels, it was so long ago I remember little), I came away knowing very little about his literary output.

This is a deeply researched, very well written, fascinating book. It brings the period to life, and firmly demarcatesof what is known abut Swift and what is guesswork on the part of previous biographers. Its only flaw is the lackof an index, surprising in a book published by Yale University Press.

to be read with close attention. A rewarding read.

I really enjoyed this book and now I have a greater understanding of the author of Gulliver's Travels. The biography is well written and immerses you in the 17th century with all its smells and shenanigans, a wonderful insight into the inspiration of Gulliver' Travels as relevant today as in Swft's day. 5 stars!

Damrosch brings a complex character to life - most informative.

The author's criticisms of a former colleague's work on Swift seemed to me to be petty academic nattering, particularly since this was the scholar whose analysis and research Damrosh most frequently discounted. He himself engages in speculation (although he does acknowledge he is speculating) that Swift was Temple's half brother and Stella Temple's natural daughter. I was better impressed with his coverage of Swift's family background and his life in Ireland. I was interested to see what he would make of Swift's seeming fascination with obscenity and disgust for bodily functions, but he seemed to me to skim over this aspect of Swift's work and to be more of an apologist than an insightful commentator. While I did learn new information, I wasn't bowled over by this work.

This is a very fine biography of Swift. I would certainly recommend it.

過去のスウィフト関係の文献を検討し、新たな資料の読みを加え３００年前の姿をよく描くことに成功した。ガリバー旅行記の作者としか認識していなかっただけに人間スウィフトの全体像が明らかになった。素晴らしい一本である。同じ著者の「Jean-jacques Rousseau」も読むつもりだ。

This was a wonderfully easy and interesting read about Swift, one of the many influential past pupils of Kilkenny College.

Brought this as a present for a friend who is really enjoying it. Delivery was spot on and condition good.