Chapter 8 - Ending and Going On (1736–1765)

Summary

For as long as he was able, Swift continued to send important poems to press in London, while Polite Conversation was published in strategically different editions there and in Dublin. Directions to Servants, finally sent to press unfinished, was brought out by Faulkner a few days after Swift’s death in 1745. But Faulkner soon lost ground to the London copy-holders, whose new 1755 edition, first advertised as to be edited by ‘an intimate Friend of the Author’, was in the event edited by a professional man of letters, John Hawkesworth, and boasted the novelty of a fashionable large quarto. The first publication of The History of the Four Last Years of the Queen in 1758 showed that even an editor who had known Swift personally could still denounce his politics. In 1765 Swift’s cousin Deane Swift added to Hawkesworth’s edition new material from family manuscripts. The volumes‘ imposing quarto option, and its clean modern pages, confirm just how much Swift in print had changed from the modest formats and expressive typography of its author’s lifetime.