Commentary

This is the official single printing of this address, which seems to derive from a collaboration between Swift and Robert Harley. Although manuscript and other versions have come down to us, this is the text that was made available to Swift’s contemporaries.

John Baskett was Queen’s Printer. Although the reversion was granted to John Barber and Benjamin Tooke, Baskett, together with the assigns of Henry Hills and Thomas Newcomb, held the position until January 1740.

References: Jonathan Swift, English Political Writings, 1711-1714, ed. Bertrand A. Goldgar and Ian Gadd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 431-41 (439-40); ); The Prose Writings of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis and others, 16 vols. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1939-74), vol. vi, pp. 181-3, 212-13; Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, vol. (London: Methuen, 1962-83), vol. ii, pp. 591-2; J. A. Downie and David Woolley, ‘Swift, Oxford and the composition of Queen’s Speeches, 1710-1714’, B ritish L ibrary J ournal, 8 (1982), 121-146; David Woolley, ‘The Canon of Swift’s Prose Pamphleteering, 1710-1714, and The New Way of Se lling Places at Court’, Swift Studies 3 (1988), 96-123 (and foldout endpaper); Charles A. Rivington, ‘Tyrant’: The Story of John Barber (York: William Sessions, 1989).