A Tale of a Tub

Description

A Tale of a Tub by Jonathan Swift was first published in 1704. This was Swift's first major work, telling the story of three brothers - Peter, Martin, and Jack. The whole story is an allegory with each brother representing a branch of Christianity. Peter is the Roman Catholic, Jack is the Protestant, and Martin is the Church of England. A Tale of a Tub is essentially a biting satirical take on the morals and ethics of the English and their religions, but while a lot of satire offers an opposing position as a solution to the one being parodied - Swift does no such thing. As controversial as it was, it was very popular at a time when religion and politics were very much intertwined. One of the major things that Swift attacks in the book is the folly of misreading - of taking things too literally and not being able to recognise nonsense - something he gives the reader ample opportunity to do with the many digressions in the book.

Part of Anne Haight's List of Banned Books.

This book has 45,784 words, 73 pages in the PDF version, and was originally published in 1704. This edition was first published in 1889.

Production notes: This ebook of A Tale of a Tub was published by Global Grey on the 27th July 2021. The artwork used for the cover is 'A Dispute Among the Doctors' by Pietro della Vecchia.