A Tale of a Tub

This article is about the satire by Jonathan Swift. For the 1633 play by Ben Jonson, see A Tale of a Tub (play).

Publication history

The Tale was originally published in 1704, by John Nutt. Swift had used Benjamin Tooke previously when publishing for Sir William Temple, he would use Tooke for both the fifth edition of the Tale (1705) and later works, and it was Tooke's successor, Benjamin Motte, who published Swift's Gulliver's Travels. This difference in printer is only one of the things that led to debate over authorship of the work.

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The first, second, and third editions of the Tale appeared in 1704, and the fifth edition came out the next year. In "The Apology for the &c.," Swift indicates that he originally gave his publisher a preliminary copy of the work, while he kept a blotted copy at his own hand and lent other copies (including one to Thomas Swift, Jonathan's "parson cousin"). As a consequence, the first edition appeared with many errors. The second edition was a resetting of the type. The third edition was a reprint of the second, with corrections, and the fourth edition contained corrections of the third.

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The first substantially new edition of the work is the fifth edition of 1705. This is largely the text modern editors will use. It was in this edition that the Notes and the "Apology for the &c." ("&c." was Swift's shorthand for Tale of a Tub: Nutt was supposed to expand the abbreviation out to the book's title but did not do so; the mistake was left) were added, which many contemporary readers (and authors) found a heating up of an already savage satire. In 1710, Swift had the 5th edition reprinted by Benjamin Tooke, but it is substantively the same as the 1705 printing, only with a new setting of the type.

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