Review by New York Times Review
SATIRE PLAYS AN important role in a healthy democracy and a vital role in an endangered one. It's timely, then, to have "Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel," John Stubbs's new biography of the finest satirist in the English language. That the name of the author of "Gulliver's Travels" persists in popular vernacular - with "Swiftian" defining caustic and accomplished wit - speaks to his lasting influence. But if Swift's satire deserves contemporary study, so does the man himself, a figure of contradiction and intellectual courage, unafraid to savage Enlightenment England and Ireland's greatest powers. Born in Ireland between the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution, Swift spent his early years in England, raised by a nurse who may well have kidnapped him. After a lackluster undergraduate career, he became private secretary to the influential diplomat and writer Sir William Temple. Later, Swift was ordained, but his political writing drew the attention of Robert Harley, the Tory prime minister of England, who made Swift his chief polemicist - an 18th-century Toby Ziegler. This was a life on the knife's edge of power, where his writing helped destroy the powerful Duke of Marlborough and led to threats: He once defused a mail bomb sent to Harley before it killed them both. After the Tories fell, Swift returned to Ireland as dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral. Although he never returned to front-line English politics, his satire was influential there and in Ireland. "Gulliver's Travels," "A Modest Proposal" and "The Drapier's Letters" - credited with saving Ireland by defeating unfair English currency policies - made him a hero in his homeland. Stubbs (the author of a life of John Donne) reports that when England's new prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, proposed arresting Swift for mauling him in verse, a friend "asked him coolly 'whether he had 10,000 men to spare' - for that was the size of the army the government would need to take Swift from his loyal Dubliners." In this excellent literary biography, Stubbs draws on extensive research to contextualize Swift's courtier's life within the hurly-burly of 18th-century foreign and domestic politics, also inspecting Swift's clerical life within the doctrinal struggles of the church. He studies Swift's literary motivations and professional contradictions: a man who disavowed political parties but became a Tory operative; a fastidious, conservative priest who became "king of the mob," rebelling against the established order with satire that delved into the stink of daily life. Swift's contradictions were evident in associations that extended through the ranks of society and to other major writers of the day. He was clubbable, but wouldn't hesitate to wound a friend for perceived deficiencies of character (or housekeeping). Among his most significant attachments were his close, controversial relationships with Esther Johnson ("Stella") and Esther Vanhomrigh ("Vanessa"). Whether these were sexual divides scholars and differentiates Stubbs's biography from Leo Damrosch's of 2013. Damrosch, rebutting Irvin Ehrenpreis's claim of Swift's asexuality, argues at length for Swift and Vanessa's relationship being sexual. Stubbs gives the friendships due consideration, but judicious weighing of the arguments leads him to a middle ground: History doesn't bear out an answer. "Both women might have been his lovers; however, the possibility will always remain that for Swift the thrill lay in nothing more than wordplay." In his early chapters, Stubbs falls into a scholar's trap: oversharing hard-won research. He digresses too often, losing Swift in a blizzard of ancillary detail. (Do we need a description of the town where Swift's first boss courted his wife?) That structural haze rapidly clears, however, and is redeemed by stellar prose, a firm narrative grip and nuanced historical and literary readings. Private yet performative, generous yet stingy, conservative yet rebellious, Swift was a knotty character. Stubbs brings an incisive intellect to the task of untangling him. JAMES MCNAMARA'S work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Times Literary Supplement, The Australian Book Review and other publications.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 1, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Like John Donne: The Reformed Soul (2007), Stubbs' second massive biography is the product of thorough research and penetration into his subject's writing. A clergyman-author as Donne was, Swift (1667-1745), Irish by birth, was driven by a deep sense of displacement from England, his rightful homeland, he felt, and he spent half his life trying to take root there. But he often returned to Dublin, where he became dean of Saint Patrick's Cathedral, came to abhor England's abuse of Ireland, and sought to influence English policy through his exceedingly sharp satirical writing, the earliest masterpiece of which is the high church, anti-Dissenter A Tale of a Tub. Rising with the Tories during Queen Anne's reign, he fell with them when Walpole's Whigs triumphed. Obliged to stay in Ireland, he then so fiercely prosecuted justice for the Irish that his birthday was marked with bonfires, rallies, and other hoopla. Dour and severe, he was enormously generous to the needy. Though his dearest friends were women, he never married, never dallied. Gulliver's Travels made him internationally famous, and his excoriating 1729 satire, A Modest Proposal, has shocked the world ever since with its savage irony. Though his last years were sad, his trajectory as a literary artist had been steadily upward, as Stubbs' ever more engrossing, superlatively literate exposition demonstrates.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this engaging, though at times excessively detailed, biography, Stubbs (Donne: The Reformed Soul) succeeds in portraying famed author Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) with all his contradictions. Swift, best known for Gulliver's Travels, was an irreverent social critic and a moralist, the dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, and "a socialite in the parlor." Born in Dublin to displaced English parents, he would always insist he was English and, as Stubbs notes, saw no contradiction between urging the native Irish to Anglicize their language and customs and opposing English tyranny over Ireland. One of his day's most prominent political writers, Swift supported the Anglican establishment yet felt an affinity with the poor, mentally ill, and oppressed, and his attitudes toward women could be, as Stubbs shows, both enlightened and repressive. Stubbs covers the English Civil War, which displaced Swift's parents; the Glorious Revolution, which led Swift to move to England; and the ascension of George I, which sent him back to Ireland. He also touches on the animosity between Catholics and Protestants, the printing and bookselling industry, Swift's literary peers, and much more. Stubbs's descriptions are vivid, and his literary analyses exacting and thought-provoking, but one wishes he had been more selective in contextual detail. Nevertheless, Stubbs excels at showing how Swift became "the most notorious writer of his day." Agent: Toby Eady, Toby Eady Associates (U.K.). (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In 1688, Jonathan Swift was disciplined at Trinity College for insulting a junior dean and inciting tumults. He would continue that behavior for the rest of his life. This biography by Stubbs (John Donne: The Reformed Soul) places the tumultuous St. Patrick's Cathedral dean within his times, beginning with the role his loyalist grandfather played during the English Civil War. Through psychological probing of Swift's life, Stubbs also seeks to pluck out the heart of Swift's many contractions this book reveals: Irish patriot who denied his Irish birth; misogynist whom two women followed to Dublin; fastidious writer of scatological verses; conservative rebel, committed Tory who hated party politics; Anglophile who opposed English colonial rule in Ireland. Despite its length, this book does not supersede Irvin Ehrenpreis's three-volume work on Swift. Stubbs disappointingly offers little analysis of Swift's writings and seems tone deaf to the irony of Polite Conversation and Directions to Servants. VERDICT A generally sound if at times overlong introduction to Swift and his age, especially strong on historical and political background. [See Prepub Alert, 7/18/16.]-Joseph Rosenblum, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A resplendent biography of the most notorious writer of his day.Theres no shortage of books about the life of Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), but this one might just dissuade others from writing anotherif Leo Damroschs excellent 2013 biography didnt already do so. (Stubbs acknowledges Damroschs achievement.) In this monumental biography, Stubbs (Reprobates: The Cavaliers of the English Civil War, 2011, etc.) presents a classic man-and-his-times narrative, recounting in remarkable detail the complex life Swift led as an orphan born in Dublin who lived mostly in England but returned to Ireland in 1713 as a reluctant rebel. He was fond of saying that he was stolen from England when a child and brought over to Ireland in a band-box. Stubbs Swift is a practical joker who rarely smiled and possessed a commanding, patriarchal air. Drawing extensively on Swifts writings and the histories of the time, Stubbs recounts the authors upbringing by a well-connected family, fine education, and employment in England as a secretary for a retired diplomat, Sir William Temple. It was then that he met the young Esther Johnson, who would be his friend for life and help him deal with his life-long vertigo, tinnitus, and nausea. Stubbs disputes rumors that he secretly married her. While in England, Swift demonstrated his power as a fabulist and master satirist, penning The Battle of the Books and A Tale of a Tub. He begrudgingly returned to Dublin to serve as dean of St. Patricks Cathedral, where he churned out anonymously written, scathing political pamphlets, the bleak and sardonic masterpiece A Modest Proposal, and Gullivers Travels, a phenomenon. Stubbs in-depth analysis of the vast cultural impact of Swifts many works is impressive, as are his portraits of Swifts literary acquaintances. This astute portrait of a complicated man who wanted to defend his homeland and to vex the world rather than divert it is truly masterful. A rich and sweeping story superbly told. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
