Select Works (Swift) — Volume I only, 1823
TL;DR: One local volume (~344 OCR pages): Life of Swift, Tale of the Tub, Battle of the Books, and minor pieces—no Gulliver in this ZIP; use for early Swift apparatus and footnotes on reception, not Martian satellites. Conclusion: pair with Gulliver extracts for full Swift thread.
ZIP: The select works of Jonathan Swift ... Hector McLean, 1823
Extract: /home/ari/dev/wget/swift/_extract/The_select_works_of_Jonathan_Swift_containing_the_whole_of/33433076096241/
The publisher’s advertisement and title page state this is Volume I of a five-volume set. The local file contains only this volume (~344 OCR pages, ~87k words).
Contents (from printed TOC)
Per 00000007.txt:
- The Life of Swift (prefatory biography in this edition)
- A Tale of a Tub
- The Battle of the Books
- The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit
- An Essay on the Fates of Clergymen
- Letter to a Very Young Lady on Her Marriage
- Swearer’s Bank
- Thoughts on Various Subjects
- &c.
Later volumes (not in this download) were advertised to include Gulliver’s Travels, Directions to Servants, Polite Conversation, and other prose.
OCR locator hints
| Work | Grep / header examples |
| Tale of a Tub | A TALE OF A TUB (many page headers, e.g. 00000123.txt, 00000143.txt, …) |
| Battle of the Books | THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS (e.g. 00000237.txt, 00000251.txt, …) |
| Life / front matter | SWIFT'S, SELECT WORKS, VOL. I |
Summary — why it matters for the Swift investigation
A Tale of a Tub (1704) and The Battle of the Books (1704) establish Swift’s early mode: allegorical religious/political satire dressed as mock-scholarship. They train readers to expect irony and persona, which later critics apply automatically to Gulliver. This volume does not resolve the Mars-moons question; it contextualizes Swift’s habit of serious-looking false documents—relevant to the “was it ever sold as fiction?” thread in swift-mars-giants-publication-stance.md.
Cross-links
Keywords: #Swift #Select #Works #Vol1 #1823 #Volume
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