7.2 /10 1 Votes7.2
Language English Media type Print, pamphlet Originally published 1745 Page count 92 | 3.6/5 Goodreads Publisher R. Dodsley & M. Cooper Pages 92 Genres Essay, Satire | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Original title Directions to Servants in General; and in particular to [...] Similar Works by Jonathan Swift, Classical Studies books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
directions to the cook from directions to servants by jonathan swift read by sir alec guinness
Directions to Servants is a satirical and humorous essay by Jonathan Swift. Swift is known to have been working on it in 1731, though it was not published until after his death in 1745. The first few chapters are much more developed than the later ones, and it appears that the work was unfinished and uncorrected at Swift's death.
Contents
- directions to the cook from directions to servants by jonathan swift read by sir alec guinness
- Critical review
- References
The work is in 16 chapters:
Critical review
A 2015 review of Les Editions de Londres suggests that the light-hearted Directions to Servants is more of an Horatian than Juvenalian satire. Swift goes beyond simple parody or satire: by providing the servants with advice that verges on the absurd he deconstructs and amusingly reveals the absurdities of the Eighteenth-century English social system. But Swift is not concerned with the reform of society, and he does not have Beaumarchais’s pre-revolutionary stress on the injustice of an aristocratic system. Rather, his intent is to mock and denounce the travails of human nature as did Ben Jonson over a century earlier.
Reviewing a reprint of 2003, the Goodreads website noted that this handbook of manners displays all of Swift's caustic skill as a satirist and his unerring eye for the little annoyances of life: "With scathing wit, Swift pits master against servant in an endless struggle for order, frugality, and the best bits of the roast".
Although the essay is generally little-known in Britain, in France it is considered (after Gulliver’s Travels) as being one of his most famous works.