A letter of serious advice to a young poet.

by Jonathan Swift

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.Western literary study flows out of eighteenth-century works by Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Frances Burney, Denis Diderot, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others. Experience the birth of the modern novel, or compare the development of language using dictionaries and grammar discourses. ++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++<sourceLibrary>Cambridge University Library<ESTCID>T196499<Notes>Verse.<imprintFull>Dublin: printed by Richard Reilly] in the year, 1735. <collation>22p.; 8

30 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1721

About the author

Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift".
Swift is remembered for works such as A Tale of a Tub (1704), An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1712), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729). He is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier—or anonymously. He was a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
His deadpan, ironic writing style, particularly in A Modest Proposal, has led to such satire being subsequently termed "Swiftian".

Reviews

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jonathan Swift’s essays “Letter of Advice to a Young Poet” (1721) & “On the Death of Esther Johnson (Stella)” (1728) are included in volume 27 off The Harvard Classics, alongside his Hints Towards an Essay on Conversation and Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding. Swift was very important to the advancement of the essay as a medium.

The second piece is a rare example of Swift taking on a completely earnest tone, recounting the merits of a close friend who had recently died. In it we see the qualities that Swift actually admired in conversation and manners as exemplified by Esther Johnson. Who this woman was remains a mystery.

“Letter of Advice to a Young Poet” is interesting, although it offers little to our knowledge of Swift’s actual literary theory about how to write verse. Much focus is on the importance, or at least potential importance, of poets to society. This is similar to Percy Shelley’s essay “A Defence of Poetry”, also included in volume 27, although Swift certainly brings more humor than arrogance to his essay. I do like his advice for the necessity of learning. As an atheist who loves studying religion, I like that Swift encourages young poets to study the Christian scriptures from an historical, cultural, and aesthetic perspective, rather than a devotional one.
I also like his endorsement of keeping a commonplace book for the poet’s ideas, along with the ideas of scholars who he studies:

“A common-place book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial reason, that ‘great wits have short memories;’ and whereas, on the other hand, poets being liars by profession, ought to have good memories. To reconcile these, a book of this sort is in the nature of a supplemental memory; or a record of what occurs remarkable in every day’s reading or conversation. There you enter not only your own original thoughts, (which, a hundred to one, are few and insignificant) but such of other men as you think fit to make your own by entering them there.”

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[Image: Cover of the Delphi Classics’ The Harvard Classics]

Citation:
Swift, J. (2018). Letter of advice to a young poet. In C. W. Eliot (Ed.), The Harvard classics (eBook). Delphi Classics. https://www.delphiclassics.com/shop/t... (Original work published 1721)

Swift, J. (2018). On the death of Esther Johnson [Stella]. In C. W. Eliot (Ed.), The Harvard classics (eBook). Delphi Classics. https://www.delphiclassics.com/shop/t... (Original work published 1728)

Title: A letter of advice to a young poet; together with a proposal for the encouragement of poetry in this kingdom & On the Death of Esther Johnson [Stella]
Author(s): Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Year: 1721, 1728
Series: The Harvard Classics (1909): Volume 27 - Delphi Complete Harvard Classics and Shelf of Fiction
Genre: Nonfiction - Essay: Satire
Date(s) read: 10/7/25 - 10/8/25
Book 208 in 2025
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