Type: Article
Elias, A.C. Jr. ‘Lord Orrery’s copy of Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Swift (1751)’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 1 (1986), pp 111-125.
This article gives an account of the copy of Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Jonathan Swift purchased by the University of Pennsylvania Library in 1981. The copy came from Orrery’s library and includes not only the text but also eleven pages of manuscript letters. These letters are printed as an appendix to the article. The text of the Memoirs is a pirated version of Orrery’s own Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift (1751), which adds seven anecdotes about Jonathan Swift. The article assesses the importance of these anecdotes and of the manuscript correspondence between Orrery and Faulkner, which concerns the printing of the pirated Memoirs.