F - The Publisher to the Reader (1711)

Summary

Headnote

The authorship of this piece is uncertain. Although the publisher named in the imprint of Swift's anonymously issued 1711 one-volume Miscellanies in Prose and Verse was the trade publisher John Morphew, the publication was actually undertaken by Swift's established bookseller, Benjamin Tooke. It is clear from Steele's letter to Swift of 8 October 1709 that it had at first been planned that Steele would ‘Usher You and Yours into the World’; but on 29 June 1710 Swift wrote to Tooke that ‘I would not have you think of Steele for a publisher; he is too busy. I will, one of these days, send you some hints, which I would have in a preface, and you may get some friend to dress them up.’ The present text is taken, with a single emendation, from 1711.

THE PUBLISHER TO THE READER.

To Publish theWritings of Personswithout their Consent, is a Practise generally Speaking, so Unfair, and has so many times proved an unsufferable injury to the Credit and Reputation of the Authors, as well as a shameful Imposition on the Publick, either by a Scandalous Insertion of Spurious Pieces, or an Imperfect and Faulty Edition of such as are Genuine, that tho’ I have been Master of such of the following Pieces, as have never yet been Printed, for several Months, I could never, tho’ much Importuned, prevail on my self to Publish them, fearing even a possibility of doing an Injury in either of those Two Respects to the Person who is generally known to be the Author of some; and, with greater Reason than I am at present at Liberty to give, supposed to be the Author of all the other Pieces which make up this Collection. But as my own unwillingness to do any thing which might prove an Injury to the supposed Authors Reputation, to whom no Man pays a juster Esteem or bears a greater Respect than my Self, has hitherto kept me from giving theWorld so agreeable an Entertainment as it will receive from the following Papers, so the Sence I had that he would really now suffer a much greater in both Instances from other Hands, was the Occasion of my determining to do it at present: Since some of the following Pieces have lately appeared in Print, from very Imperfect and Uncorrect Copies.