The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., And Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, Vol. 1 of 6: With Copious Notes and Addition, and a Memoir of the Author (Classic Reprint) - Rilegato

Swift, Jonathan

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0364117664 ISBN 13: 9780364117668

Casa editrice: Forgotten Books, 2018

Riassunto

Excerpt from The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., And Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, Vol. 1 of 6: With Copious Notes and Addition, and a Memoir of the Author

It was the great author's uniform object alike agreeable to his lite rary ambition and to his high and liberal spirit to give his works to the public upon as low terms as by mechanic art they could be pre pared; and with this view he declined to make them a source of profit, to employ means to protect them as Copyright, and more particularly to embody them in large and high-priced editions, accessible indeed to the few, but a book sealed and a fountain Of knowledge shut up from the rest of mankind. The repeated restrictions placed upon the cheap knowledge system, after the accession of the Whigs to power in Swift's own times, were denounced by him with the spirit of a sage and a patriot, as inconsistent with civil freedom and the instruction of mankind. Other circumstances favored the change; fashion, capital, taste, and art, all combined to create a monopoly of expensive and select editions, and in proportion as the immortal productions of the celebrated dean were withdrawn from the masses and the great public of the world to circu late among the polite, the fashionable, and the refined, his celebrity was unfairly restricted. He was judged by partial rules; and the author of The Drapier's Letters and Gulliver's Travels, who had written for mankind, was made the hero of a Clique, amenable to the Opinions of a caste, subjected to every wind of doctrine and party ca price, now extravagantly exalted by one faction, and then as unjustly reviled by another. The sense of mankind was no longer taken upon his merits as at the period when he lived, when the wide world of poli tics and letters was his arbitrator, when the twopenny tracts and the Old penny broadsides diffused the knowledge of his inimitable writings into the remotest corners of the United Empire.

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Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Forgotten Books
• Data di pubblicazione: 2018
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0364117664
• ISBN 13: 9780364117668
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 660
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: Bärenreiter-Verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH & Co. KG; bscheuch@baerenreiter.com; ; Heinrich-Schütz-Allee 35-37; Kassel; Germania; 34131; Germania