Page 132 - Gullivers

in the 1730s, including English, Dutch and German. A Portuguese edition in three volumes was published in Lisbon in 1804, the first two volumes of which are held by Dublin City Libraries as part of its wider collection of Swift-associated holdings.
Swift’s own wide reading influenced his writing. As a ‘graduate and a gentleman’ he had access to Ireland’s first public library, Archbishop Marsh’s Library, adjacent to
St. Patrick’s, which was founded in 1701. Here he could read religious treatises, works by classical authors, works of travel and history, and pore over the wonderful folio maps in the library. In his own private library also he had a good collection of serious and entertaining reading matter. After his death in 1745 his library was sold by auction and a printed catalogue issued. He read the works of contemporary authors, numbering among his friends
the playwright John Gay, the satirist
John Arbuthnot and the poet Alexander Pope. He corresponded with the Abbé Desfontaines and Voltaire in French. Swift helped to raise subscriptions in Ireland for Voltaire’s new work, La Henriade, when
it was published in London in 1728, and he held a copy in his own library. In his library he had many travel books, including
a copy of Joseph Addison’s Travels Through Italy (London, 1705), presented to him by the author; books of travels to America, Voyages and Discoveries in South America (London, 1698) and Wafer’s Voyage to the Isthmus of America (London, 1699); and a late sixteenth-century travel book, Richard Hakluyt’s Collection of Voyages of the English Nation. These narratives served him well when he came to write his own account of travels to strange and wonderful lands. Curiously, he did not have a copy of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, but he may have read it from the library of one of his friends.
Dublin City Libraries aim to hold as comprehensive a collection as possible
of Swift’s works for research and to promote the pleasure of reading his timeless writings.Works of criticism and interpretation and works associated with Swift are also acquired. New acquisitions are made each year to expand and develop the holdings. Sister institutions in the city, Trinity College library, National Library of Ireland,Archbishop Marsh’s Library and
the library of The Royal Irish Academy
hold extensive Swift collections, and no appreciation of Swift’s works is complete without visiting the holdings of each library.
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