An Introduction to: A Letter from Dr. Swift to Mr. Pope
(Jim McLaverty)
- Abbreviated title
- A letter from Dr. Swift to Mr. Pope
- JSA Identification Number
- 9_3_2
- Teerink/Scouten Number
- 61
- ESTC Number
- T32147
- Copy and its Location
- ECCO BL, 12274.i.1(1) or Ashley 3781
- Publisher and Printer
- Dean Swift’s literary correspondence, for twenty-four years; from 1714 to 1738. Consisting of original letters to and from Mr. Pope, Dr. Swift, Mr. Gay, Lord Bolingbroke, Dr. Arbuthnot, Dr. Wotton, Bishop Atterbury, D. & Dss. of Queensbury, Vol. , pp 10-23.
- London, Curll, Edmund , 1741.
Commentary
Edmund Curll had been tricked by Pope into publishing his letters in 1735, enabling Pope to publish an official edition in protest in 1737. Curll consequently thought he had the right to invade Pope’s property in his letters at any point. It is unclear which of the 1741 editions Curll’s is pirated from. I suspect the answer is the edition printed through the Knaptons for Pope, though it is clear that Curll drew on George Faulkner’s Dublin preface and apparatus.
References: The Prose Writings of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis and others, 16 vols. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1939-74), vol. ix, pp. 23-4, 370-1; Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, 3 vols. (London: Methuen, 1962-83), vol. iii, pp. 136-7; Paul Baines and Pat Rogers, Edmund Curll , Bookseller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007).