A Tale of a Tub is certainly Swift's least classifiable work. He's best known, of course, for Gulliver's Travels. This work was mostly written at the very start of his career, when he hadn't yet totally hardened into his later misanthropy, and it has all the demented exuberance of a great writer in his mid-20s finding a voice.

It defies description. The kernel of it is a satire on religious controversies, but that makes up about a third of the actual text. The rest is a series of prologues, forewords, dedications, prefaces, afterwords, epilogues and appendices, the sheer profusion of which suggest very much that Swift is poking dire fun at the idea of writing itself. In that respect, it goes further than any 20th century French golden boy of artistic revolt; Artaud looks like a stamped-in-tin romantic poet when set against Swift's manic nihilism. A Tale of a Tub is the closest anyone has ever got to writing a book that tackles head-on the futility of writing books, but that's only one interpretation of it. It exhausts interpretation by being as near as possible about nothing at all - and hence about everything. Plus it's not even 200 pages long. Swift never wrote as irresponsibly ever again, although the Travels, 'A Modest Proposal', the Bickerstaffe Papers, the 'Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift' and the Drapier's Letters are all admirable enough. A Tale of a Tub is as comprehensive a piece of literary terrorism as was ever attempted.

Swift, the greatest English satirist, is of course best known for Gulliver's Travels, but the Tale of a Tub is more complex, more vicious, and funnier. In some of the best prose of the 18th century, he ridicules all sorts of conventions, religious, literary, rhetorical, and otherwise. He makes full use of the capacity that prose has for being deliriously irrelevant and digressive. It is similar in some ways to Tristram Shandy and the novels of postmodernism. It'll give you fits.

This is a good collection of Swift's works. Many of his most famous tales and pamphlets appear in this collection including a Modest Proposal and the Wretched State of Ireland. The collection also includes a Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels. This collection si a very comprehensive and adequate group of all who like Swift.

Great book. Plenty of facts that I was unaware of before. E.g. gladius doesn't actually mean short sword; most legionaries were conscripts rather than volunteers; all three legionary eagles captured in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9 were eventually recovered. The Battle section is excellent - really makes you understand what happened in an ancient battle. And the plates are good too.

The story follows Clarissa, a young woman who wants nothing more than to be left to herself. The problem is, she winds up being used as a pawn in the fortunes of her family and a libertine known as Lovelace. While the story is very interesting, the novel has many things going against it. The novel is entirely told in letters, which at times completely alienates the audience. The novel is also extremely long, and even the abridged version becomes a chore to read at times. It is worth a look, but only if you have a lot of patience and a lot of time.

Samuel Richardson's massive 1747-8 novel, "Clarissa," is not only the longest novel I've ever read, but one of the best and most complex. Much like Richardson's first novel, "Pamela," "Clarissa" deals with the torments of a virtuous young lady abducted by a rake/libertine (in modern parlance, a rapist) who submits the heroine to a series of trials. Unlike Pamela, a lower class maiden, Clarissa is a member of an established and wealthy family. This change in social situation allows Richardson to explore a host of new issues, with the primary goal of moral didacticism remaining intact between the two.

Clarissa Harlowe, the most beautiful and exemplary of her sex, is being imposed upon by her implacable family to marry one Mr. Solmes, a man of no mean fortune, but whose ethics, especially with regard to his own family, are suspect. Simultaneously, Clarissa's sister, Arabella, has just rejected a proposal from one Robert Lovelace, the heir of a nobleman, educated and refined, but known for his libertinism - his tendency and enjoyment of seducing young women and then abandoning them. Lovelace falls in love, or in lust, with Clarissa, and after he and Clarissa's brother James, heir to the Harlowe fortune, engage in a near fatal duel, Clarissa's continued correspondence with Lovelace becomes a major thorn in the side of the Harlowes' plans for Clarissa. The Harlowes continue to urge the addresses of Mr. Solmes while vilifying Lovelace - Clarissa not approving of either - and when her family's insitence becomes insupportable to Clarissa, the utterly demonic Lovelace takes advantage, whisking her away from a seemingly inevitable union with Solmes. Thus begins an absolutely terrifying journey for Clarissa through the darkness of humanity, as Lovelace plots and executes his seduction of the 'divine' Clarissa.

An epistolary novel, "Clarissa" is written in the form of a series of letters spanning nine months, principally between Clarissa and her best friend and iconoclast, Anna Howe, and between Lovelace and a fellow libertine, John Belford. Richardson's 'to the moment' style of writing gives a minute account of everything that happens to the main characters almost as it happens, giving the novel a highly dramatic sense of urgency. The four major correspondents, as well as others, also give the novel a well-developed sense of perspective, as we get not only the events, but biased opinions and readings of all the other characters, making the events at times difficult to follow, but at the same time, marvelously rich and complex.

Some of the most interesting facets of this novel are its interactions with the law, primarily inheritance law, the contrast between history and story, and at the forefront, the debate over gender roles in marriage. Almost of a piece with the novel's legal issues, Richardson examines the vagueries of semantics - what do words mean? How are words regarded and used differently by men and women? Richardson also confronts the way we read and interpret 'truth' - in a book composed of letters, subjectively written and read, where can we look to for 'truth'?

Among the characters in the novel, by far the most captivating and challenging in "Clarissa" is the aforementioned Anna Howe. The ways she clashes with tradition and propriety throughout the novel are entertaining, and very much reminiscent of the eponymous heroine of Defoe's "Moll Flanders." An amazing and influential novel to say the least, anyone with a few weeks on their hands who is interested in the history of the novel in English should pick up and give "Clarissa" some serious attention, stat!

The UNABRIDGED Clarissa (Penguin ed.) is a powerful, moving eighteenth-century English masterpiece, the first great psychological novel. Its length may seem daunting and it does take at least six weeks to read, but you will be rewarded by finding yourself immersed in the minds of Clarissa and Lovelace. You will feel as though you are living in their world, facing their moral dilemmas, deciding on courses of action, predicting consequences. However, if you accidentally pick up the Sherburn ABRIDGEMENT of Clarissa, you will NOT be able to savor Richardson's famous "writing to the moment." If you doubt me, take a look at Mary Anne Doody and Florian Stuber's article, "Clarissa Censored," in the journal Modern Language Studies (1988). The abridgement is a travesty of Richardson's greatest novel.

Robinson Crusoe is the perfect treat for the wilderness lover. The novel takes the reader on a journey through many hardships that the main character encounters in order to display just how trying nature can be. Almost every new day, Crusoe must find and develop a new survival tactic in order to stay alive. There are several reasons why one should engulf in reading this book.
Robinson Crusoe displays strength and incredible will to survive. This can be very inspiring to someone who does not have a lot of confidence in themselves. Crusoe has faith in himself and God, believing that he will be guided in the right direction. God plays a large role in his everyday life. Crusoe never was a religious man before he was stranded on the island, but he believed God had allowed him to be the sole survivor of the shipwreck for a reason and he owed it to God to be the best man that he could be.
Another reason to read this book is that it shows that one can do whatever they put their mind to. Crusoe worked long and hard to create things that will facilitate his survival and make things more convenient for himself. He creates a protective shelter, makes his own tools, baskets, and pots, and even grows and raises his own food.
This book will also get many people to realize just how good their lives actually are. Many, not all, of us have lives that are not threatened by wondering how we will get our next meal or if someone or something is out to hunt us down, but Crusoe must face these dilemmas and find ways to secure himself. The wonderful thing about this novel is that it shows how difficult these tasks can be, yet Crusoe does not give up and he pursues his goals until they are accomplished.
This novel can instigate someone to try something new that perhaps thay were uneasy about doing before. Robinson is faced with so many new surroundings at once, yet deals with them so well. If he would have panicked, he eventually would have starved to death. Instead, Crusoe thinks logically and pursues what is needed to survive.
Robinson Crusoe is an amazing adventure novel that explores the life of a very strong-willed man. The main character tells his own story and it is as if he is speaking directly to the reader, which makes it seem even more like reality. Daniel Defoe has written a great novel.

With Robinson Crusoe, Daniel DeFoe transformed liturature forever. In his time, the novel did not exist as we know it today. Through Robinson Crusoe, DeFoe helped created this genre that we love today. Many people judge this book by today's standards; however, DeFoe wrote this book long before today's novel completely developed. This book is not only great for its creativity as a new genre, but also is wonderful for its adventurous plot. If you've ever seen Gilligan's Island, read Jules Verne's Mysterious Island, or heard any stories about someone stranded on a desert island, you are just hearing another rehashed version of DeFoe's story.

As with many "classics," the story of Robinson Crusoe has been around for so many years that we're all familiar--we think--with Mr. Crusoe and his "man" Friday. But the story of the ill-fated Mr. Crusoe is more than just a story about a man who is stranded on a desert island, it is a story, like that of the biblical Jonah, of a man running from responsibility and destiny, who ultimately finds it in the most unlikely place--within himself. The book does contain some pretty graphic violence and archaic thoughts about slavery, but gives you a real taste of what life was like both in the "civilized" world and Crusoe's island kingdom. This edition (edited by Joe Wheeler)has beautiful reproductions of the original wood-cut illustrations and a comprehensive introduction that gives background into the life and times of Daniel Defoe. A must read!

his great novel, written in 1771, is one of those books that is written so much in the present moment of its own time that it becomes a valuable and fascinating time capsule for future generations. There is no more entertaining way to visit another time and place. There is no need for you to come to the novel already knowing anything about the eighteenth century, because Smollett has his sharp observant mind and all five of his senses open to his world for you--here you will read all of the sights, sounds, tastes, touches, and most memorably of all (for better and for worse) the *smells* of what surrounds him.

The grumpy-old-man-with-a-heart-of-gold Matthew Bramble takes his family and assorted hangers-on for a tour of Great Britain, visiting Bath, London, and many other places along the way. For lovers of Scotland, you are in for a treat here, as Smollett writes this novel as an important "P.R." job for his homeland to his skeptical English readers. The descriptions of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the Hebrides make you want to book your airline tickets right away; Smollett has an eye for those aspects of the Scottish landscape and Scottish people that haven't really changed in the last 250 years.

This is an epistolary novel, written entirely in the form of letters with no central narrator.
The strength of this format is that it allows the reader to see the same places and events from the (sometimes radically different) perspective of more than one person. As a result, you get comedy, tragedy, farce, romance, satire, and a good adventure story all in one enjoyable package.

One word of caution, though: because of the epistolary format and the travelogue format, you shouldn't really approach "Humphry Clinker" with the expectations of finding a strong unified plot. This is something that we get mostly from the novels of the late eighteenth century and certainly the Victorian novels of the nineteenth century. There IS a plot--a good one--but just don't expect the plot to be the star of the show. If you read it as a series of memorable and sharply drawn sketches and characters and places, and for how well it captures what is unique to the time and place in which it is written, I think you will enjoy it a great deal.

One of the great things about these Amazon customer reviews is that they can alert you to wonderful books that you would otherwise not consider reading. "Humphry Clinker" is a prime example. An eighteenth-century epistolary novel may not sound too enticing and I would guess that few people other than students whose courses oblige them to, would read it these days. Well, I am here to tell you that you should! It is social satire at its brilliant best. Smollett satirized English society mercilessly, but was even harder on his fellow Scots. The result is a novel that is a continual and wicked joy to read.

The characters are finely drawn and their correspondence is written in very individual voices. We follow their adventures as they journey through England and Scotland in the years before revolution in America and France changed the world forever. It is a world obsessed with social class, money and advantageous marriage (so why did I say it changed for ever!). There is plenty of sharp humor and a deal of profound insight into human nature. Smollett's last and best novel, it is a wise and mature journal of Mankind's folly.

Incidentally, the graphic description of the spa town of Bath will make you never want to drink spa water again. Reading that particular chapter requires a strong stomach.

Full of social satire. A comedy with pathos. Insightful verbal blunders. This picaresque book of travel letters is a hoot with a most satisfying conclusion as the characters get their come-uppance and rewards. I love the distinct and lively images that shine through the puns, word games, and allusions.