Swift; Hack Hater or Grub Street Gentleman?To what extent is Swift part of the publishing culture Grub Street he so satirises in A Tale of Tub?

Swift; Hack Hater or Grub Street Gentleman?

To what extent is Swift part of the publishing culture Grub Street he so satirises in A Tale of Tub?

Far from being removed from the publishing culture of Grub Street, Jonathon Swift is actually affiliated with the group he so scorns and satirises. The expanding print culture in early nineteenth-century London produced new editions and translation of Greek and Roman authors. The additional influx of heavily footnoted tracts on various ‘scientific’ devices by an emerging strata of intellectuals, were branded the ‘moderns’ by Swift and his circle. Swift could never become a ‘Grub Street Gentleman’ proper for he wrote A Tale of Tub to ensure that an ‘authorship’ would remained in his hands, in spite of the modernisation of textual production. . His argument is strikingly modern in approach and the eventually he accepts the irony and hollowness of his situation.

There can be no denying the abject contempt Swift has for t...