Jonathan Swift: A Portrait by Victoria Glendinning

by Victoria Glendinning

Poet, polemicist, pamphleteer and wit, Swift is best known as the author of "Gulliver's Travels". In this biography, Victoria Glendinning investigates the main events and relationships of Swift's life and provides a portrait set in a tapestry of controversy and paradox.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

British biographer, critic, broadcaster and novelist. She is President of English PEN, a winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, was awarded a CBE in 1998 and is Vice-president of the Royal Society of Literature.

Glendinning read modern languages at Oxford and worked as a teacher and social worker before becoming an editorial assistant for the Times Literary Supplement in 1974.

She has been married three times, the second to Irish writer, lawyer and editor Terence de Vere White, who died of Parkinson's disease in 1994.

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good biography of Swift. This book is better than Glendinning's book about Trollope. Glendinning does deal with a rumor of incest, but, unlike some biographers, uses care to keep the reader aware of the fact that it is impossible to prove and most likely just invention. If you like Swift, this is a good biography to read.
You should read it just for the stories about Lady Montagu’s commode and Edward Hyde.
There is also the puzzle of Swift. If he was such a monster, why did such intelligent women want to stay so close to him, to risk and some cases breaking the codes of society and class?
Perhaps that is what is good about this book, the solving of a mystery combined with the opening of a new one.

[Doug Thomson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit disappointing. I like Glendinning, having read her very interesting & well-written bio of Vita Sackville-West. But in the case of Swift, the source materials seem to have been limited/fragmentary and maybe his life just wasn’t that interesting. Somehow the author seems less enthusiastic this time around. There are some highlights though, e.g. the intriguing, playful life-long relationship Swift had with “Stella”.

[Johanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting and informative read. I knew almost nothing about Jonathan Swift before I read this - didn't even know he was Irish! Victoria Glendinning writes with great authority about this complex man. His life was not a thrill ride by any stretch of the imagination and he had many disappointments in his life. I'm not sure I'd have liked him if I'd met him but I am glad that I know a little more about him. I may even read some more of his work than Gulliver's Travels!

[Dustin Simmons · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. Swift is an intriguing and complicated person, but this biography is overly complicated and not very intriguing. The author has a strange tendency to insert herself and her personal feelings about Swift into the narrative.

Useful information, but I had a hard time forcing myself through the whole book.

[Alex Mesman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of biographies are not very well written. They assume knowledge that isn't there if you're not a scholar. This biography does not make that mistake. It's easy to read and well written. It really gives a good picture of the well known satirist.