# *Select Works* (Swift) — Volume I only, 1823

> **TL;DR:** One local volume (**~344 OCR pages**): **Life of Swift**, ***Tale of the Tub***, ***Battle of the Books***, and minor pieces—**no** *Gulliver* in this ZIP; use for **early Swift apparatus** and **footnotes** on reception, not Martian satellites. **Conclusion:** pair with ***Gulliver*** extracts for **full Swift** thread.

**ZIP:** `The select works of Jonathan Swift ... Hector McLean, 1823`  
**Extract:** `/home/ari/dev/wget/swift/_extract/The_select_works_of_Jonathan_Swift_containing_the_whole_of/33433076096241/`

The publisher’s advertisement and title page state this is **Volume I** of a five-volume set. The local file contains **only this volume** (~344 OCR pages, ~87k words).

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## Contents (from printed TOC)

Per `00000007.txt`:

- The **Life of Swift** (prefatory biography in this edition)  
- ***A Tale of a Tub***  
- ***The Battle of the Books***  
- ***The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit***  
- **An Essay on the Fates of Clergymen**  
- **Letter to a Very Young Lady on Her Marriage**  
- **Swearer’s Bank**  
- **Thoughts on Various Subjects**  
- *&c.*

Later volumes (not in this download) were advertised to include *Gulliver’s Travels*, *Directions to Servants*, *Polite Conversation*, and other prose.

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## OCR locator hints

| Work | Grep / header examples |
|------|-------------------------|
| *Tale of a Tub* | `A TALE OF A TUB` (many page headers, e.g. `00000123.txt`, `00000143.txt`, …) |
| *Battle of the Books* | `THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS` (e.g. `00000237.txt`, `00000251.txt`, …) |
| Life / front matter | `SWIFT'S`, `SELECT WORKS`, `VOL. I` |

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## Summary — why it matters for the Swift investigation

***A Tale of a Tub* (1704)** and ***The Battle of the Books* (1704)** establish Swift’s early mode: **allegorical religious/political satire** dressed as mock-scholarship. They train readers to expect **irony and persona**, which later critics apply automatically to *Gulliver*. This volume does **not** resolve the Mars-moons question; it **contextualizes** Swift’s habit of **serious-looking false documents**—relevant to the “was it ever sold as fiction?” thread in [swift-mars-giants-publication-stance.md](swift-mars-giants-publication-stance.md).

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## Cross-links

- [Swift hub](page.md)  
- [Corpus map](index-swift-corpus-and-editions.md)  
- [*Gulliver’s Travels* index](index-gullivers-travels.md)

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Keywords: #Swift #Select #Works #Vol1 #1823 #Volume