Jonathan Swift
Whole text
To The Right Worshipful The Mayor, Aldermen, Sheriffs, And Common Council Of The City Of Cork.
Deanery House, Dublin, August 15, 1737.
Gentlemen,
I received from you, some weeks ago, the honour of my freedom, in a silver box, by the hands of Mr. Stannard; but it was not delivered to me in as many weeks more; because, I suppose, he was too full of more important business. Since that time, I have been wholly confined by sickness, so that I was not able to return you my acknowledgment; and it is with much difficulty I do it now, my head continuing in great disorder. Mr. Faulkner will be the bearer of my letter, who sets out this morning for Cork.
I could have wished, as I am a private man, that, in the instrument of my freedom, you had pleased to assign your reasons for making choice of me. I know it is a usual compliment to bestow the freedom of the city on an archbishop, or lord-chancellor, and other persons of great titles, merely on account of their stations or power: but a private man, and a perfect stranger, without power or grandeur, may justly expect to find the motives assigned in the instrument of his freedom, on what account he is thus distinguished. And yet I cannot discover, in the whole parchment scrip, any one reason offered. Next, as to the silver box, there is not so much as my name upon it, nor anyone syllable to show it was a present from your city. Therefore I have, by the advice of friends, agreeable with my opinion, sent back the box and instrument of freedom by Mr. Faulkner, to be returned to you; leaving to your choice whether to insert the p.366 reasons for which you were pleased to give me my freedom, or bestow the box upon some more worthy person whom you may have an intention to honour, because it will equally fit everybody.
I am, with true esteem and gratitude,
Gentlemen, Your most obedient and obliged servant, Jon. Swift.
Document details
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Title statement
Title (uniform): To the right Worshipful The Mayor, Aldermen, Sheriffs, and Common Council of the City of Cork
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: 1670 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: E700001-004
Availability: Available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of academic research and teaching only.
Source description
Editions and secondary literature
- 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.
- J. Bowles Daly (ed.), Ireland in the days of Dean Swift, Irish tracts 1720–1734. (London 1887).
- Frederick Ryland (ed.), Swift's Journal to Stella, A.D. 1710–1713. (London 1897).
- Temple Scott (ed.), A tale of a tub, and other early works. (London 1897).
- Frederick Falkiner, Essays on the portraits of Swift: Swift and Stella. (London 1908).
- 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.
- Stephen L. Gwynn, The life and friendships of Dean Swift. (London 1933).
- Stanley Lane-Poole (ed.), Selections from the prose writings of Jonathan Swift with a preface and notes. (London 1933).
- Ricardo Quintana, The mind and art of Jonathan Swift. (Oxford 1936).
- Louis A. Landa, Swift's Economic Views and Mercantilism, English Literary History 10/4 (December 1943) 310–335.
- R. Wyse Jackson, Swift and his circle. (Dublin 1945).
- Herbert Davis, The Satire of Jonathan Swift (New York 1947).
- Martin Price, Swift's rhetorical art. (New York 1953).
- Robert C. Elliott, Swift and Dr Eachard. Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 69/5 (December 1954) 1250–1257.
- John Middleton Murry, Jonathan Swift: A Critical Biography. (London 1954).
- John Middleton Murry, Swift. (London: Published for the British Council and the National Book League 1955).
- Kathleen Williams, Swift and the age of compromise. (London 1959).
- John M. Bullitt, Jonathan Swift and the anatomy of satire: a study of satiric technique. (Harvard 1961).
- Harold Williams (ed.), The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift. (Oxford 1963–65).
- Herbert J. Davis (ed.), Jonathan Swift: essays on his satire and other studies. (New York 1964).
- Herbert J. Davis (ed.), Gulliver's Travels. [based on the Faulkner edition, Dublin 1735] (Oxford 1965).
- Herbert J. Davis (ed.), Swift: poetical works. (New York 1967).
- 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.
- Brian Vickers (ed.), The world of Jonathan Swift: essays for the tercentenary. (Oxford 1968).
- Kathleen Williams, Jonathan Swift. (London 1968).
- Morris Golden, The self observed: Swift, Johnson, Wordsworth. (Baltimore 1972).
- Jane M. Snyder, The meaning of 'Musaeo contingens cuncta lepore', Lucretius 1.934, Classical World 66 (1973) 330–334.
- Claude Julien Rawson, Gulliver and the gentle reader: studies in Swift and our time. (London and Boston 1973).
- A. L. Rowse, Jonathan Swift, major prophet. (London 1975).
- Alexander Norman Jeffares, Jonathan Swift. (London 1976).
- Clive T. Probyn, Jonathan Swift: the contemporary background. (Manchester 1978).
- Clive T. Probyn (ed.), The art of Jonathan Swift. (London 1978).
- Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The man, his works, and the age (three volumes). (London 1962–83).
- David M. Vieth (ed.), Essential articles for the study of Jonathan Swift's poetry. (Hamden 1984).
- James A. Downie, Jonathan Swift, political writer. (London 1985).
- Frederik N. Smith (ed.), The genres of Gulliver's travels. (London 1990).
- James Kelly, 'Jonathan Swift and the Irish Economy in the 1720s', Eighteenth-century Ireland: Iris an dá chultúr 6 (1991) 7–36.
- Joseph McMinn (ed.), Swift's Irish pamphlets. (Gerrards Cross 1991).
- Robert Mahony, Jonathan Swift: the Irish identity. (Yale 1995).
- 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).
- Claude Rawson (ed.), Jonathan Swift: a collection of critical essays. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jeresey, 1995).
- Michael Stanley, Famous Dubliners: W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, Wolfe Tone, Oscar Wilde, Edward Carson. (Dublin 1996).
- Daniel Carey, 'Swift among the freethinkers'. Eighteenth-century Ireland: Iris an dá chultúr, 12 (1997) 89–99.
- Victoria Glendinning, Jonathan Swift. (London 1998).
- 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).
- Bruce Arnold, Swift: an illustrated life. (Dublin 1999).
- Nigel Wood (ed.), Jonathan Swift. (London and New York 1999).
- Christopher J. Fauske, Jonathan Swift and the Church of Ireland, 1710–24 (Portland/Oregon 2001).
- David George Boyce; Robert Eccleshall; Vincent Geoghegan (eds.), Political discourse in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ireland. (Basingstoke and New York 2001).
- Ann Cline Kelly, Jonathan Swift and popular culture: myth, media and the man. Basingstoke 2002.
- Dirk F. Passmann and Heinz J. Vienken, The library and reading of Jonathan Swift: a bio-bibliographical handbook. 4 vols. (Frankfurt 2003).
- 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.
- Frank T. Boyle, 'Jonathan Swift' [A companion to satire]. In: Ruben Quintero (ed.), A companion to satire (Oxford 2007) 196–211.
- 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.
- 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
‘To the right Worshipful The Mayor, Aldermen, Council of the City of Cork’ (1905). In: The prose works of Jonathan Swift D. D. Ed. by Temple Scott. Vol. 7: Historical and political tracts—Irish. London: George Bell and Sons, pp. 366–68.
You can add this reference to your bibliographic database by copying or downloading the following:
@incollection{E700001-004,
editor = {Temple Scott},
title = {To the right Worshipful The Mayor, Aldermen, Council of the City of Cork},
booktitle = {The prose works of Jonathan Swift D. D.},
editor = {Temple Scott},
address = {London},
publisher = {George Bell and Sons},
date = {1905},
volume = {7: Historical and political tracts—Irish},
pages = {366–68}
}
Encoding description
Project description: CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts
Sampling declarations
The text covers pages 366–68.
Editorial declarations
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 correspondence.
Interpretation: Names of persons are not tagged. Terms for cultural and social roles are not tagged.
Reference declaration
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.
div0 is reserved for the text (whether in one volume or many).
Profile description
Creation: By Jonathan Swift
Date: August 15, 1737
Language usage
- The text is in English. (en)
Keywords: political; prose; satire; 18c; Cork
Revision description
(Most recent first)
- 2019-06-05: Changes made to div0 type. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
- 2011-02-12: New wordcount made; new SGML and HTML file created. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
- 2008-09-23: Keywords added; file validated. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
- 2008-07-24: Value of div0 "type" attribute modified, additions to bibliography made, content of 'langUsage' revised; minor modifications made to header. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
- 2005-08-25: Normalised language codes and edited langUsage for XML conversion (ed. Julianne Nyhan)
- 2005-08-04T14:20:15+0100: Converted to XML (ed. Peter Flynn)
- 2004-03-05: Minor modifications to header/file; HTML file created. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
- 2004-03-01: File parsed. (ed. Benjamin Hazard)
- 2004-02-28: Header constructed; bibliography compiled, structural mark-up inserted and verified, text proofed. (ed. Benjamin Hazard)
- 2004-02-17: Text scanned and checked. (Text capture Benjamin Hazard)