Jonathan Swift

by A.L. Rowse

Preface
Early years & inheritance
Sir William Temple
Dublin & Stella
The world, the power & the glory
Cadenus & Vanessa
The Drapier & Ireland
The Major Prophet. Gulliver
Stella
Literature & life
Further Reading
List of Illustrations
Index

Genres: Biography

240 pages, Unbound

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Alfred Leslie Rowse, CH FBA, known professionally as A. L. Rowse and to his friends and family as Leslie, was a prolific Cornish historian. He is perhaps best known for his poetry about Cornwall and his work on Elizabethan England. He was also a Shakespearean scholar and biographer. He developed a widespread reputation for irascibility and intellectual arrogance.

One of Rowse's great enthusiasms was collecting books, and he owned many first editions, many of them bearing his acerbic annotations. For example, his copy of the January 1924 edition of The Adelphi magazine edited by John Middleton Murry bears a pencilled note after Murry's poem In Memory of Katherine Mansfield: 'Sentimental gush on the part of JMM. And a bad poem. A.L.R.'

Upon his death in 1997 he bequeathed his book collection to the University of Exeter, and his personal archive of manuscripts, diaries, and correspondence. In 1998 the University Librarian selected about sixty books from Rowse’s own working library and a complete set of his published books. The Royal Institution of Cornwall selected some of the remaining books, and the rest were sold to dealers.

Reviews

[Martin Ramsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

A.L. Rowse's biography 'Jonathan Swift major prophet' was a great find at the Salvos. I've read his work on Shakespeare and a short memoir of the poet W.H. Auden and enjoyed them all. Rowse's writing has great clarity but his stereotypical views about gender are dated. For example, "... in fact, men are really more shockable than women" (225) And, "... women are (in italics) more snobbish than men." (227)

The best parts of the Swift biography are the analyses of 'Gullivers Travels'. These include comparisons of twentieth century and eighteenth century figures that show the validity and ongoing relevance of Swift's political satire. His various disgusts are also held up as examples of his eccentricity and misanthropy, not to mention misogyny. In Part Two of 'Gulliver's Travels' where 'size magnified human horrors' Swift describes a woman with a cancer in her breast "swelled to a monstrous size, full of holes, in two or three of which I could have easily crept." (171) In a comparison of Swift and Beckett, Rowse writes, "That Anglo-Irish writer of today, Samuel Beckett, in his portraits of human deliquesence and decay, is not so effective." (171) Ultimately, Rowse is of the view that human civilisation has run its course. In this sense, Jonathan Swift was a 'major prophet'!

[Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rowse clearly identifies with swift to an extreme degree and is constantly arrogantly bringing himself into it as a point of comparison