Commentary

This is a mysterious edition because no one knows who ‘T. Cole’ is. Probably there was no T. Cole, and the publishers of this uncensored version of The Publick Spirit of the Whigs simply wished to disguise their identity. The text reprints the first edition text, though there is more variation in capitals, italics, spelling, and punctuation than in an uncensored ‘fourth edition’ put out by Morphew, presumably around the same time – whenever that was

The original response to Steele’s The Crisis, had been a quarto pamphlet, but this edition is in the cheaper, octavo format. The typography is essentially that of the first edition, and the printing is still expressive of the work’s engagement in detailed controversial exchange.

References: Jonathan Swift, English Political Writings, 1711-1714, ed. Bertrand A. Goldgar and Ian Gadd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 446-76 (466-7); The Prose Writings of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis and others, 16 vols. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1939-74), vol. viii, pp. 29-68, 201-4; Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, 3 vols. (London: Methuen, 1962-83), vol. ii, pp. 702-13.