Hints to Servants

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.7

Word count: 55K words
Chapters: 6

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today. Hints to Servants by John Jones and Jonathan Swift. Author: Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745. Language: English. Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature. Release Date: Sep 3, 2014

Editor's review

Hints to Servants is a satirical pamphlet co-written by Jonathan Swift and John Jones, using the form of "rules for servants" to reflect the class relations and everyday ethics of eighteenth-century English society. In his characteristic ironic style, Swift writes the petty rules governing master-servant relations with deadpan seriousness, while every line is a jab at human vanity and social convention. Its value lies not in offering practical household guidance but in showing how satirical literature can start from the most ordinary scenes of life to observe how power, obedience, and respectability are spoken of and sustained. The language bears clear marks of its era, and the sentence structures and diction pose some difficulty for modern readers; precisely for this reason, it serves well as supplementary reading for understanding eighteenth-century English prose style and the satirical tradition. Readers may treat it as a hybrid of social-historical document and literary text, paying attention to passages that seem instructive but are in fact teasing. The Project Gutenberg edition is a public-domain English eBook, convenient for searching and comparative reading.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in eighteenth-century English literature and the satirical tradition
Literature students studying Swift's works or British social history
English learners who enjoy irony and are willing to read closely
Teachers and researchers needing public-domain English texts for textual analysis

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking practical housekeeping or employment-management advice
Beginners with limited English reading experience who need modern annotations
General readers expecting a coherent narrative or novel

Reading tips

Read an introduction to the background of Swift's satirical works before entering the text, so the ironic tone is easier to recognize.
Excerpt entries by theme and read them alongside sources on eighteenth-century British social history.
Mark period-specific vocabulary first and look it up after a full read-through, to avoid interrupting the reading rhythm.
Read it alongside contemporary conduct manuals to observe how satirical writing borrows from and distorts conventional genres.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Was this book written by Swift alone?

Sources indicate the book was co-written by John Jones and Jonathan Swift, with both authors named in the attribution. Readers may note differences in tone within the text, but should not conclude without evidence which parts were written by whom.

Is this book suitable as a source for British social history?

It can be used as supplementary material, because its form imitates the conduct and rule books of the time and reflects how master-servant relations were spoken of. But it is itself a satire and cannot be cited directly as objective record; it should be read against formal historical sources.

How difficult is the English?

The language bears the sentence structures and diction of eighteenth-century English, distant from modern English, and the ironic tone requires some feel for the language to recognize. Readers should have at least intermediate English reading ability and read with annotations or background materials.

What are the practical advantages of the Project Gutenberg edition?

Project Gutenberg offers a free public-domain electronic text, convenient for full-text searching, copying passages for notes, and comparing with other public-domain editions. It contains no modern introduction or detailed annotations, so readers must supply background material themselves.

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About the author

Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745 Author

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) was an Irish writer best known for his satirical works. His masterpiece Gulliver's Travels uses a voyager's encounters in distant lands to satirize politics and human nature through allegory, while A Modest Proposal exposes social cruelty in a tone of calm irony. The library holds 24 of his works, including A Tale of a Tub and The Journal to Stella as well as various prose writings, along with different editions and translations of Gulliver's Travels. His style is austere and witty, marked by exaggeration and irony, and has exerted a lasting influence on later satirical literature. Because public information is limited, details of his life are not elaborated here.