Lawrence Today magazine, Fall 2004
Bertrand
A. Goldgar, professor of English and the John N. Bergstrom Professor of Humanities,
has been named by the Cambridge University Press as a contributing
editor to a landmark new edition of the works of Jonathan Swift
.
The United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Board has awarded a
grant of £553,661 over five years (approximately $1.02 million) to
support the compilation of the Cambridge
Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, which
will be published in 15 volumes between 2006 and 2011. The multi-volume edition
will be the first scholarly edition of Swift’s collected works in 40
years and, according to the Cambridge University Press, will be the first ever
to provide full textual and explanatory information for Swift’s texts.
The Anglo-Irish author Swift, born in Dublin in 1667, is widely acknowledged
as the foremost satirist in the English language. Best known, perhaps, for
his novel Gulliver’s Travels (1726), which was intended as a
satirical indictment of human nature, Swift wrote extensively, with an array
of books, political pamphlets, prose, letters, and poetry to
his credit.
Goldgar’s contribution to the Cambridge edition, Swift’s English
Political Writing, 1711-1714, covers Swift’s literary engagement
in the politics of early 18th-century London. Although he formerly considered
himself a Whig in terms of political philosophy, Swift joined the Tories
in 1710 and edited the Tory Examiner for a year. A staunch defender
of the Tory party and its leadership, Swift turned his biting satire against
the Whigs and their policies, producing such influential political pamphlets
as “The Conduct of the Allies” (1711), “Remarks on the Barrier
Treaty” (1712), and “The Public Spirit of the Whigs” (1714).
A member of the Lawrence English department faculty
since 1957, Professor Goldgar is the author or editor of seven books, an
internationally recognized expert
on
18th-century political
satire, and one of the world’s leading scholars on the life and work
of Henry Fielding.