CELT document E700001-003

On Stella's Birthday

Jonathan Swift

Whole text

    On Stella's Birthday

    March 13, 1718-1719.

  1. Stella this day is thirty-four,
    (We shan't dispute a year or more);
    However, Stella, be not troubled,
    Although thy size and years are doubled
    Since first I saw thee at sixteen,
    The brightest virgin on the green;
    So little is thy form declined,
    Made up so largely in thy mind.
  2. O, would it please the gods to split
    Thy beauty, size, and years, and wit,
    No age could furnish out a pair
    Of nymphs so graceful, wise, and fair;
    With half the lustre of your eyes,
    With half your wit, your years, and size.
    And then, before it grew too late,
    How should I beg of gentle fate,
    (That either nymph might have her swain,)
    To split my worship too in twain.

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Title statement

Title (uniform): On Stella's Birthday

Author: Jonathan Swift

Responsibility statement

Electronic edition compiled by: Benjamin Hazard

Funded by: University College, Cork and The Higher Education Authority via the CELT Project.

Edition statement

2. Second draft.

Extent: 1430 words

Publication statement

Publisher: CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College Cork.

Address: College Road, Cork, Ireland—http://www.ucc.ie/celt

Date: 2004

Date: 2008

Distributor: CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland.

CELT document ID: E700001-003

Availability: Available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of academic research and teaching only.

Source description

Editions and secondary literature

  1. An excellent bibliography covering many aspects of Jonathan Swift's Life, his writings, and criticism, compiled by Lee Jaffe, is available at http://www.jaffebros.com/lee/gulliver/bib/index.html.
  2. J. Bowles Daly (ed.), Ireland in the days of Dean Swift, Irish tracts 1720–1734. (London 1887).
  3. Frederick Ryland (ed.), Swift's Journal to Stella, A.D. 1710–1713. (London 1897).
  4. Temple Scott (ed.), A tale of a tub, and other early works. (London 1897).
  5. Frederick Falkiner, Essays on the portraits of Swift: Swift and Stella. (London 1908).
  6. C. M. Webster, Swift's Tale of a Tub compared with Earlier Satires of the Puritans. Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 47/1 (March 1932) 171–178.
  7. Stephen L. Gwynn, The life and friendships of Dean Swift. (London 1933).
  8. Stanley Lane-Poole (ed.), Selections from the prose writings of Jonathan Swift with a preface and notes. (London 1933).
  9. Ricardo Quintana, The mind and art of Jonathan Swift. (Oxford 1936).
  10. Louis A. Landa, Swift's Economic Views and Mercantilism, English Literary History 10/4 (December 1943) 310–335.
  11. R. Wyse Jackson, Swift and his circle. (Dublin 1945).
  12. Herbert Davis, The Satire of Jonathan Swift (New York 1947).
  13. Martin Price, Swift's rhetorical art. (New York 1953).
  14. Robert C. Elliott, Swift and Dr Eachard. Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 69/5 (December 1954) 1250–1257.
  15. John Middleton Murry, Jonathan Swift: A Critical Biography. (London 1954).
  16. John Middleton Murry, Swift. (London: Published for the British Council and the National Book League 1955).
  17. Kathleen Williams, Swift and the age of compromise. (London 1959).
  18. John M. Bullitt, Jonathan Swift and the anatomy of satire: a study of satiric technique. (Harvard 1961).
  19. Harold Williams (ed.), The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift. (Oxford 1963–65).
  20. Herbert J. Davis (ed.), Jonathan Swift: essays on his satire and other studies. (New York 1964).
  21. Herbert J. Davis (ed.), Gulliver's Travels. [based on the Faulkner edition, Dublin 1735] (Oxford 1965).
  22. Herbert J. Davis (ed.), Swift: poetical works. (New York 1967).
  23. R. B. McDowell, 'Swift as a political thinker'. In: Roger Joseph McHugh and Philip Edwards, Jonathan Swift: 1667–1967, a Dublin tercentenary tribute (Dublin 1967). 176–186.
  24. Brian Vickers (ed.), The world of Jonathan Swift: essays for the tercentenary. (Oxford 1968).
  25. Kathleen Williams, Jonathan Swift. (London 1968).
  26. Morris Golden, The self observed: Swift, Johnson, Wordsworth. (Baltimore 1972).
  27. Jane M. Snyder, The meaning of 'Musaeo contingens cuncta lepore', Lucretius 1.934, Classical World 66 (1973) 330–334.
  28. Claude Julien Rawson, Gulliver and the gentle reader: studies in Swift and our time. (London and Boston 1973).
  29. A. L. Rowse, Jonathan Swift, major prophet. (London 1975).
  30. Alexander Norman Jeffares, Jonathan Swift. (London 1976).
  31. Clive T. Probyn, Jonathan Swift: the contemporary background. (Manchester 1978).
  32. Clive T. Probyn (ed.), The art of Jonathan Swift. (London 1978).
  33. Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The man, his works, and the age (three volumes). (London 1962–83).
  34. David M. Vieth (ed.), Essential articles for the study of Jonathan Swift's poetry. (Hamden 1984).
  35. James A. Downie, Jonathan Swift, political writer. (London 1985).
  36. Frederik N. Smith (ed.), The genres of Gulliver's travels. (London 1990).
  37. James Kelly, 'Jonathan Swift and the Irish Economy in the 1720s', Eighteenth-century Ireland: Iris an dá chultúr 6 (1991) 7–36.
  38. Joseph McMinn (ed.), Swift's Irish pamphlets. (Gerrards Cross 1991).
  39. Robert Mahony, Jonathan Swift: the Irish identity. (Yale 1995).
  40. Christopher Fox, Walking Naboth's vineyards: new studies of Swift (University of Notre Dame Ward-Philips lectures in English language and literature, Vol. 13). (Notre Dame/Indiana 1995).
  41. Claude Rawson (ed.), Jonathan Swift: a collection of critical essays. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jeresey, 1995).
  42. Michael Stanley, Famous Dubliners: W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, Wolfe Tone, Oscar Wilde, Edward Carson. (Dublin 1996).
  43. Daniel Carey, 'Swift among the freethinkers'. Eighteenth-century Ireland: Iris an dá chultúr, 12 (1997) 89–99.
  44. Victoria Glendinning, Jonathan Swift. (London 1998).
  45. Aileen Douglas; Patrick Kelly; Ian Campbell Ross, (eds.). Locating Swift: essays from Dublin on the 250th anniversary of the death of Jonathan Swift, 1667–1745. (Dublin 1998).
  46. Bruce Arnold, Swift: an illustrated life. (Dublin 1999).
  47. Nigel Wood (ed.), Jonathan Swift. (London and New York 1999).
  48. Christopher J. Fauske, Jonathan Swift and the Church of Ireland, 1710–24 (Portland/Oregon 2001).
  49. David George Boyce; Robert Eccleshall; Vincent Geoghegan (eds.), Political discourse in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ireland. (Basingstoke and New York 2001).
  50. Ann Cline Kelly, Jonathan Swift and popular culture: myth, media and the man. Basingstoke 2002.
  51. Dirk F. Passmann and Heinz J. Vienken, The library and reading of Jonathan Swift: a bio-bibliographical handbook. 4 vols. (Frankfurt 2003).
  52. Mark McDayter, 'The haunting of St James's Library: librarians, literature, and The Battle of the Books'. Huntington Library Quarterly, 66:1–2 (2003) 1–26.
  53. Frank T. Boyle, 'Jonathan Swift' [A companion to satire]. In: Ruben Quintero (ed.), A companion to satire (Oxford 2007) 196–211.
  54. Harry Whitaker, C. U. M. Smith and Stanley Finger (eds.), Explorations of the Brain, Mind and Medicine in the Writings of Jonathan Swift. Springer (US) 2007.
  55. Leo Damrosch, Jonathan Swift: his life and his world. Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History. New Haven: Yale University Press [2013].

The edition used in the digital edition

‘On Stella’s Birthday’ (1880). In: The works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D. D., Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, carefully selected with a biography of the author and original and authentic notes‍. Ed. by D. Laing Purves. Edinburgh: William P. Nimmo and Co., pp. 605–606.

You can add this reference to your bibliographic database by copying or downloading the following:

@incollection{E700001-003,
  editor 	 = {D. Laing Purves},
  title 	 = {On Stella's Birthday},
  booktitle 	 = {The works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D. D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, carefully selected with a biography of the author and original and authentic notes},
  editor 	 = {D. Laing Purves},
  address 	 = {Edinburgh},
  publisher 	 = {William P. Nimmo and Co.},
  date 	 = {1880},
  pages 	 = {605–606}
}

 E700001-003.bib

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Project description: CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts

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Correction: Text has been proof-read twice.

Normalization: The electronic text represents the edited text.

Quotation: There are no quotations.

Hyphenation: The editorial practice of the hard-copy editor has been retained.

Segmentation: div0=the poem. Metrical lines, line-breaks and verses are marked and numbered.

Interpretation: Names of persons are not tagged. Terms for cultural and social roles are not tagged.

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The n attribute of each text in this corpus carries a unique identifying number for the whole text. The title of the text is held as the first head element within each text.

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Profile description

Creation: By Jonathan Swift 1718–1719

Language usage

  • The text is in English. (en)

Keywords: satire; poem; 18c

Revision description

(Most recent first)

  1. 2011-02-12: New wordcount made; new SGML and HTML file created. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
  2. 2008-09-23: Keywords added; file validated. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
  3. 2005-08-25: Normalised language codes and edited langUsage for XML conversion (ed. Julianne Nyhan)
  4. 2005-08-04T14:20:12+0100: Converted to XML (ed. Peter Flynn)
  5. 2004-03-05: Minor modifications to header/file; HTML file created. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
  6. 2004-03-01: File parsed. (ed. Benjamin Hazard)
  7. 2004-02-28: Header constructed; bibliography compiled, structural mark-up inserted and verified, text proofed. (ed. Benjamin Hazard)
  8. 2004-02-17: Text scanned and checked. (Text capture Benjamin Hazard)

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