Motte V Faulkner - Critical Response

Critical Response

It is uncertain if Swift allowed Faulkner to publish the works in order to allow an Irish publisher to compete against an English publisher or if Swift had no say in the matter and Faulkner published the works against Swift's will. In a letter to Motte in May 1736, Swift did not defend Faulkner's legal right to publish the works but made sure to admonish the attitude and action of Motte as a publisher for prosecuting Faulkner instead of coming to an agreement that Faulkner would be allowed to reprint the copyrighted material.

However, some critics believe that Swift used the incident to "enlarge the affair into another example of English oppression of the Irish." Swift wrote in a letter to Motte on 25 May 1736:

the cruel oppressions of this kingdom by England are not to be borne. You send what books you please hither, and the booksellers here can send nothing to you that is written here. As this is absolute oppression, if I were a bookseller in this town, I would use all the safe means to reprint London books, and run them to any town in England, that I could, because whoever offends not the laws of God, or the country he lives in, commits no sin.... But I am so incensed against the oppresions from England, and have so little regard to the laws they make, that I do, as a clergyman, encourage the merchants both to export wool and woollen manufactures to any country in Europe, or anywhere else, and conceal it from the Custom-house officers, as I would hide my purse from a highwayman, if he came to rob me on the road, although England hath made a law to the contrary; and so I would encourage our booksellers here to sell your author's books printed here, and send them to all the towns in England, if I could do it with safety and profit; because I repeat, it is no offence against God, or the laws of the country I live in.

There is much debate in the academic community on which printer produced the "authoritative" edition of Swift's works, especially Gulliver's Travels. Harold Williams was one of the major proponents of the Faulkner edition being "correct". However, some critics argue that the Faulkner edition was instead a "corrected" edition that added new revisions, and that neither text can truly be called authoritative.