I'm going to claim "read" on this one even though I haven't strictly read everything inside the covers. I got through most of it, but after a rather arduous 30 page rhyming poem, I couldn't make it much further though the rest (which was largely more poetry).

The book is cute, if anything over 140 years old can be said to be cute. I bought it because I was charmed by the cover and the title and the old advertisements in the front and back cover ("To Mothers! Woodward's "Gripe Water' or Infants Preservative...") and really no bibliophile worth their salt could pass a story called "Battle of the Books".

Battle of the Books was, once I got past the archaic writing, clever and pretty epic for a short story. It was written to be satiric, as a representation of the critical movement against the "Ancient Books" by literary critics of the age. The battle is pitched at St. James' Library (I'm assuming once the library has closed for a good long weekend), with various deities finding it too irresistible not to choose sides, get involved, and make a mess.

I won't tell you who won; that would be a spoiler. I'd imagine that had I been a contemporary of Swift's (or just much better educated in literary criticism) the ending would have a deeper meaning that as it is, I can only guess at. Still I enjoyed it - it was epic and fun even without all the insider's knowledge.

The next couple of stories are aimed squarely at almanac editors. These were so acidly satiric they ceased to be 'funny' although the audacious claims remained amusing. From there on, it's almost all poetry and most of it written as odes to the love of Swift's life, Stella. Of them, the poem Baucis and Philemon firmly my favourite. ( )

Dieses Büchlein versammelt einige kurze, überwiegend satirische Schriften von Jonathan Swift und gibt (zumindest in meiner ebook-Ausgabe, die nominell mehr Seiten hat) auch eine kurze Einführung. Auf die titelgebende "Battle of the Books" war ich hier in einem der Diskussion-Threads aufmerksam geworden und war neugierig, was sich dahinter verbirgt.

Beim Lesen hat sich die Geschichte dann aber doch als recht zäh erwiesen - war aber noch die für mich flüssigste von allen, die im Büchlein enthalten sind. Ohne Vertrautheit mit den historischen Hintergründen fiel es mir schwer, den Inhalt mit Sinn zu versehen, da es sich meiner Meinung nach in fast allen Stücken um satirisch verbrämte Kritik an Persönlichkeiten aus Swifts Zeit handelt.

Für Literatur- und Geschichtsbegeisterte mag sich hier ein ganz anderes Leseerlebnis einstellen. ( )

Gutenberg version here.

First use in print of phrase "sweetness and light."