![[SWIFT, Jonathan]. A Proposal for correcting, improving and ascertaining the English Tongue; in a letter to the Most Honourable Robert Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, Lord High Treasurer of Great Britain. London: Benj. Tooke, 1712.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2015/NYR/2015_NYR_12435_0179_000(swift_jonathan_a_proposal_for_correcting_improving_and_ascertaining_th120811).jpg?w=1)
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[SWIFT, Jonathan]. A Proposal for correcting, improving and ascertaining the English Tongue; in a letter to the Most Honourable Robert Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, Lord High Treasurer of Great Britain. London: Benj. Tooke, 1712.
8° (196 x 125mm). Half-title. Modern green quarter morocco, spine gilt, uncut.
FIRST EDITION, published soon after 17 May. Swift wanted the language to be controlled by a select group of grammarians – and thus to achieve fixity. This would have the important consequence that older books in the language would always remain intelligible. “I would have our language, after it is duly correct, always to last; I do not mean that it should never be enlarged: Provided that no Word which a Society shall give a sanction to, be afterwards antiquated and exploded, they may have liberty to receive whatever new ones they shall find occasion for: Because then the old Books will be always valuable, according to their intrinsick Worth, and not thrown aside on account of unintelligible Words and Phrases.” This was one of very few publications to which Swift attached his name. He wrote to Stella, 10 May 1712: “I suffer my name to be put at the End of it, wch I nevr did before in my Life”. Valerie Rumbold remarks that this printing “adopt[s] a formal typographical style appropriate to the rhetoric of Swift’s public staging of his familiar access to a great man”, Lord Treasurer Oxford (Parodies, Hoaxes, Mock Treatises 669-74). Goldsmiths’ 4983; Rothschild 2032; Teerink 577.
8° (196 x 125mm). Half-title. Modern green quarter morocco, spine gilt, uncut.
FIRST EDITION, published soon after 17 May. Swift wanted the language to be controlled by a select group of grammarians – and thus to achieve fixity. This would have the important consequence that older books in the language would always remain intelligible. “I would have our language, after it is duly correct, always to last; I do not mean that it should never be enlarged: Provided that no Word which a Society shall give a sanction to, be afterwards antiquated and exploded, they may have liberty to receive whatever new ones they shall find occasion for: Because then the old Books will be always valuable, according to their intrinsick Worth, and not thrown aside on account of unintelligible Words and Phrases.” This was one of very few publications to which Swift attached his name. He wrote to Stella, 10 May 1712: “I suffer my name to be put at the End of it, wch I nevr did before in my Life”. Valerie Rumbold remarks that this printing “adopt[s] a formal typographical style appropriate to the rhetoric of Swift’s public staging of his familiar access to a great man”, Lord Treasurer Oxford (Parodies, Hoaxes, Mock Treatises 669-74). Goldsmiths’ 4983; Rothschild 2032; Teerink 577.