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Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 20 hrs and 43 mins
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Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World
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Summary
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner, Biography, 2013
Jonathan Swift is best remembered today as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, the satiric fantasy that quickly became a classic and has remained in print for nearly three centuries. Yet Swift also wrote many other influential works, was a major political and religious figure in his time, and became a national hero, beloved for his fierce protest against English exploitation of his native Ireland. What is really known today about the enigmatic man behind these accomplishments? Can the facts of his life be separated from the fictions?
In this deeply researched biography, Leo Damrosch draws on discoveries made over the past 30 years to tell the story of Swift’s life anew. Probing holes in the existing evidence, he takes seriously some daring speculations about Swift’s parentage, love life, and various personal relationships and shows how Swift’s public version of his life - the one accepted until recently - was deliberately misleading. Swift concealed aspects of himself and his relationships, and other people in his life helped to keep his secrets. Assembling suggestive clues, Damrosch re-narrates the events of Swift’s life while making vivid the sights, sounds, and smells of his English and Irish surroundings.
Through his own words and those of a wide circle of friends, a complex Swift emerges: a restless, combative, empathetic figure, a man of biting wit and powerful mind, and a major figure in the history of world letters.
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What listeners say about Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World
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- James
- 15-07-17
Wonderful
But please learn how to pronounce Gifford.
It's G as in golf; not G as in gel.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Mr. N. B. Cherry
- 14-07-17
_________ ______ _________.
Interesting text, occasionally spoiled by the American narrator's mispronunciations of English place and family names.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Dan Sands
- 23-03-24
Swift
Biography which is both academic and accessible it should be enjoyed by lovers of Irish history, satire and 17th/18th century politics.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Dennis Sommers
- 04-12-23
A thorough biography
For someone who knew next to nothing about Swift or his work, this is a perfect introduction.
It has been useful, too, to be able to find ‘A modest proposal a etc. and ‘Take of a tub’ on Audible, so the chapters commentating on them have been maximally useful.
The reader is competent, though his American’s efforts Stan Irish accent need a little extenuation and he is occasionally a bit too enthusiastic: thus notion of performance as opposed to ‘reading’ doesn’t help; but these are very minor distractions from what is altogether a splendid and informative production.
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