A Tale of a Tub.: Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind. To which is added, An Account of a Battel between the Antient and Modern Books in St. James's Library.

London: Printed for John Nutt, , 1704. Against religious factionalism First edition of Swift's first full-length book, a satire on religious factionalism with three brothers representing Roman Catholicism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism. "While Swift's reputation today rests largely on his [Gulliver's] Travels, the work that put him in the center of the literary world of his day was A Tale of a Tub... I suspect that among readers who have spent years studying Swift's works, few would disagree that, judged on the basis of dazzling literary brilliance, A Tale is Swift's greatest work" (Quintero, p. 203). The latter half, the "Battle of the Books", "is a defence of Temple's cultural opposition to certain branches of 'modern' learning such as accurate historical and textual scholarship and mathematics, as expressed in William Temple's Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning (1690)" (ODNB). Octavo (184 x 107 mm). Contemporary calf, rebacked and relined to style, covers panelled in blind. A few tiny spots of wear to calf, a few splashes of green to fore edge slightly encroaching into outer margin of contents in places. A very good copy. ESTC T49832; Rothschild 1992; Teerink 217. Ruben Quintero, A Companion to Satire, 2008.