As with his acclaimed biography of John Donne, John Stubbs paints a vivid portrait of an extraordinary man and a turbulent period of English and Irish history.
John Stubbs was born in 1977 and studied English at Oxford and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge where he completed a doctorate in 2005. Donne- The Reformed Soul was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. Reprobates was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.
Stubbs goes further than any [biographer] previously in recreating
the world Swift lived and exploring the duality of his character.
... [Along] with beautifully crafted lines... Another feature of
Stubb's biography is its vast historical scholarship. As well as
giving us a thoroughly credible Swift, this is a riveting account
of English and Irish life in the late 17th and early 18th
centuries. If there can be a definitive life of Jonathan Swift,
this is it
*New Statesman*
John Stubbs handles the intensely complicated political and
historical background to Swift's life with admirable deftness and
clarity. There have been dozens of lives of Swift. This one, unlike
some of its predecessors, is readable, sane, alert and beautifully
observed
*Literary Review*
Through agile prose and erudition, Stubbs succeeds in offering
something delicate, subtle and new. ... In [this] fine and
sensitive book, Stubbs restores Swift's writing to its rich
religious and cultural contexts without diminishing its
autonomy
*Financial Times*
Stubbs offers a kinder, rather admiring inspection of the great
fighter and ruthless truth-teller
*Sunday Times*
An entertaining and ambitious work that intelligently binds
together the art and the politics of mid-17th-century England
*Financial Times*
On fire with ideas and enthusiasm, excels at providing Donne with a
living context
*Sunday Times*
Highly readable, dashing as well as detailed
*Guardian*
One of the many virtues of John Stubb's compendious, deeply
researched and absorbing biography is that illuminates the events
not just of Swift's life but of the world before and around him.
... In this superb biography, Stubbs succeeds in enabling us to
understand the complexities and character of this greatest of
writers
*The Times Book of the Week*
Stubbs is an ideal guide to the tortuous ins and outs of Swift's
time, an age defined by its political and religious conflicts, and
their effects on his writing. ... As a biographer, Stubbs is
attuned to detail and aims to provide a scholarly account of
Swift's life
*Daily Telegraph*
Impressive [and] astoundingly readable
*The Sunday Times*
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