A tale of a tub. Written for the universal improvement of mankind. To which is added, An account of a battel between the antient and modern books in St. James's Library

All titles
  • A tale of a tub. Written for the universal improvement of mankind. To which is added, An account of a battel between the antient and modern books in St. James's Library
  • Full and true account of the battel fought last Friday, between the antient and the modern books in St. James's library.
People / Organizations
Imprint
London?] : [s.n.], Anno M.DCC.XI. [1711
Publication year
1711
ESTC No.
N13639
Grub Street ID
3537
Description
310, [2] p. ; 12°.
Note
Anonymous. By Jonathan Swift

This edition has "Vein" on p.69, line 3 from foot; "uicely" on p.207, line 5 from foot

Includes: 'A discourse concerning the mechanical operation of the spirit'

The 'Battel' and the 'Discourse' have separate title pages; the pagination and register are continuous

This is the first printed of four small duodecimos dated "1711" and the only one of these editions certain to be correctly dated. It took as printer's copy revised states of the "third" London edition for J. Nutt (T49834; Teerink 219); the other "1711" small duodecimo piracies descend from it. These three later duodecimos were sometimes bound with A Complete Key to a Tale of a Tub and/or with a frontispiece and seven additional plates (those later add-ons are not found in any copy of this 1711 edition). See James E. May, "The Duodecimo Editions of Swift's A Tale of a Tub ("1711") and A Complete Key to the Tale of a Tub (1714)." Pp. 95-130 in Reading Swift: Papers from the Sixth M"unster Symposium on Jonathan Swift. Edited by Hermann J. Real, Kirsten Juhas, and Sandra Simon. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2013

Dedication to John Somers

With an initial advertisement leaf and a final blank leaf

Signatures: A-N]1]2.