Republic of Letters versus Republica Grubstreetaria, 1690–1711

Abstract

In the 1690s, when Swift began writing, he mistakenly looked to his cousin, John Dryden, and to his employer, Sir William Temple, for guidance on how to make his mark as an author. Sir William Temple had achieved his fame as a courtier, diplomat, belle lettrist in another age, before the cultural center of England shifted from the country estate and court to the City of London, when printed literature targeted to a general audience became the most influential force in English-speaking cultures.1 Swift was unaware that the model Temple offered him was anachronistic. Swift s other beacon was his cousin John Dryden. On Temples Moor Park estate in Surrey, Swift, removed from the London scene, might not have realized that although Dryden had once been Poet Laureate and the epitome of Augustan high culture, he had, in essence, become a professional writer working in more popular modes by the 1690s.2 With Dryden and Temple as exemplars, Swift attempted to do what the “self-crowned laureates” (Richard Helgerson’s term) of the Renaissance (Spenser, Jonson, and Milton) had done before him: boldly define himself as the voice of his generation.3 Because times had changed in the quarter century since Milton wrote Paradise Lost, Swift s early annunciations did not have the dramatic effect for which he might have hoped. In apprentice pieces, Swift started to understand the new world constructed by the popular press and, through trial and error, eventually learned how to make himself an important part of it.KeywordsPopular CultureTitle PagePopular LiteratureAnonymous AuthorPrint CultureThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.