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(Editor's note: In a departure from normal DLB procedure, the author cites conjectural dates of composition, instead of dates of publication, after Swift 's titles in the text.)
Jonathan Swift --author of A Tale Of A Tub (1704), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729)--was the greatest prose satirist in the history of English literature. Since the recent publication of five monographs and a collection of essays on the subject of his poetry, he has also become recognized as a master of satiric verse. His poetry has a relationship either by interconnections with, or by reactions against, the poetry of his contemporaries and predecessors. He was probably influenced, in particular, by the Restoration writers John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester and Samuel Butler (who shared Swift 's penchant for octosyllabic verse). He may have picked up pointers from the Renaissance poets John Donne and Sir Philip Sidney (from whom he may have adopted the name "Stella" for his best friend, Esther Johnson).
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