This volume also includes a chronology, further reading, a glossary, notes and a biographical dictionary. In her introduction to this new edition, Carol Fabricant discusses Swift’s life and turbulent times, his political views and his powers as a writer of complex irony and intricate word play. Ingenious and unconventional, Swift is revealed here as one of the greatest satirists in the English language. His masterly essay is accompanied by a generous selection of prose works, among them pamphlets attacking British rule in his native Ireland, periodical essays critiquing the new capitalist and military classes, a journal detailing his political activities in London, a loving tribute to his beloved ‘Stella’ after her death and pieces on such diverse subjects as the absurdities of astrology, the joys of punning and comical rules for servants. It was inspired by his observations on poverty in Ireland. Here Swift unleashes the full power of his ironic armoury and corrosive wit, finding his targets - the British ruling class and avaricious landlords, and the brutalized Irish, complicit in their own oppression - with deadly precision. A Modest Proposal For Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to the Publick is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Photography: Piet Janssens (cover front), Eoin Carey (cover back), Vermeir & Heiremans (archival documents). To ease poverty in Ireland by eating the children of the poor was the satirical ‘solution’ suggested by Jonathan Swift in his essay ‘A Modest Proposal’ (1729). Vermeir & Heiremans, A Modest Proposal, 2018. Paperback (September 11th, 1998): $6.The Penguin Classics edition of Jonathan Swift’s savagely satirical A Modest Proposal and Other Writings is edited with an introduction and notes by Carol Fabricant.The irony is this: in the three centuries since, humanity has made it increasingly difficult to find evils so absurd that no one would actually attempt them, leaving modern-day Swifts with little material to work with anymore. His 'Modest Proposal: For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick' is presented with a completely straight face. Jonathan Swift thought that England's anti-poverty proposals were so outrageously evil that nothing short of an absurd parody of them would suffice.

A modest proposal book cover