An Oxford University academic has applied digital image analysis to intimate letters sent simultaneously by Jonathan Swift, writer of Gulliver’s Travels, to two women, with some surprising results.
Assisted by an FBI forensic document analyst, academic Dr Abigail Williams has found that the Anglican clergyman, famous for writing sophisticated satires such as Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal used a peculiar form of deletion to disguise his intimacies. Where some of Swift’s most intimate lines have been crossed out, it has previously been thought that this was done by someone else — perhaps a censor — at a later date.
But Dr Williams has claimed that it was Swift himself who scored through these lines. Dr Williams of the Faculty of English Language and Literature has retranscribed and edited the letters from Jonathan Swift to two women (Esther Johnson and Rebecca Dingley), which constitute Swift’s The Journal to Stella, as part of the Cambridge University Press edition of Swift’s collected works.
The original letters are held in the British Library.
Dr Williams, a Fellow at St. Peter’s College, said: “Swift had an intriguing life — he wrote classic and enduring satires about the religion and politics of his day, but they reveal little about his own feelings”.
The letters provide an insight into his personal life which will fascinate anyone who has read the likes of Gulliver’s Travels or A Tale of Tub.