 First edition (UK) | |
| Author | Graham Swift |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | London Magazines Editions (UK) Poseidon Press (US) |
Publication date | 1982 |
| Pages | 146 |
| ISBN | 978-0-904-38846-6 |
Learning to Swim and Other Stories is the first collection of stories by English author Graham Swift published in 1982. All eleven stories were first published in British magazines. [1]
Nasrullah Mambrol writes that "The motif of marital unhappiness recurs in the collection as a whole. The husbands in the stories fear intimacy and invite betrayal through their inability to connect... The stories differ only in the degree of antagonism exhibited and the variety of pain-inducing strategies each story describes, since all the couples in Swift’s stories appear to stay together in order to “conceal their feelings", as the narrator of “Cliffedge” suggests, rather than seek emotional fulfilment. [2]
The collection was well received in England but was not as favourable in America. In Contemporary Authors (V.122) "more than one critic remarked that some of the tales seemed too studied and even uncompelling." Many of his works, especially short stories, leave the reader with many unanswered questions. Most questions are easily answered by considering Swift's work as a whole. [1] Learning to Swim is not a collection of happy, light tales. One critic writes, "A list of themes reads like a microcosm of the Sunday morning newspapers: infidelity to partner (three), sexual traumas (two), incest (one), age (three), suspected bestiality (one), murder and mayhem (one)." [1]
Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift".
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A Tale of a Tub was the first major work written by Jonathan Swift, composed between 1694 and 1697 and published in 1704. It is arguably his most difficult satire, yet considered by some to be his best. The Tale is a prose parody divided into sections of "digression" and a "tale" of three brothers, each representing one of the main branches of western Christianity. A satire on the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches and English Dissenters, it was famously attacked for its profanity and irreligion, starting with William Wotton, who wrote that it made a game of "God and Religion, Truth and Moral Honesty, Learning and Industry" to show "at the bottom [the author's] contemptible Opinion of every Thing which is called Christianity." The work continued to be regarded as an attack on religion well into the nineteenth century. One commentator complained that Swift must be "a compulsive cruiser of Dunghils … Ditches, and Common-Shores with a great Affectation [sic] for every thing that is nasty. When he spies any Objects that another Person would avoid looking on, that he Embraces.”
Graham Colin Swift FRSL is an English writer. Born in London, England, he was educated at Dulwich College, London, Queens' College, Cambridge, and later the University of York.
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"The Portrait of Mr. W. H." is a story written by Oscar Wilde, first published in Blackwood's Magazine in 1889. It was later added to the collection Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories, though it does not appear in early editions. An enlarged edition planned by Wilde, almost twice as long as the Blackwood's version, with cover illustration by Charles Ricketts, did not proceed and only came to light after Wilde's death. This was published in limited edition by Mitchell Kennerley in New York in 1921, and in a first regular English edition by Methuen in 1958, edited by Vyvyan Holland.
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