An Introduction to: The Last Will and Testament of Jonathan Swift
(Jim McLaverty)
- Abbreviated title
- The last will and testament of Jonathan Swift
- JSA Identification Number
- 12_31_2
- Teerink/Scouten Number
- 804
- ESTC Number
- T145564
- Copy and its Location
- ECCO ,
- Publisher and Printer
- The last will and testament of Jonathan Swift... Taken out of the Perogative [sic] Court of Dublin, Vol. , pp .
- London, Cooper, Mary, 1746.
Commentary
Swift’s Will has not survived. It was printed by Faulkner on a half-sheet, which then became bound in with his edition of the Works. This London edition emends the reading ‘vindicatorem’ for Swift’s tablet to ‘vindicem’. Herbert Davis is right to reject this attempt to make Swift’s Latin more classical: it’s difficult to imagine how the reading ‘vindicatorem’ (which is the reading in the cathedral) got there if it didn’t come from Swift.
Thomas and Mary Cooper took over Thomas Warner’s trade publishing business when he died in 1733. The business was used regularly by Pope, Dodsley, and their circle, and it became highly successful . It continued until Mary’s death in 1761.
References: The Prose Writings of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis and others, 16 vols. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1939-74), vol. xiii, pp. 147-58, 223-4; Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age (London: Methuen, 1962-83), vol. iii, pp. 655, 903-4; Michael Treadwell, ‘London Trade Publishers, 1675-1750’, Library, 6th ser. 4 (1982), 99-134.