"Cloonagashel", 27 Priory Drive, Blackrock, County Dublin, Ireland. Telephone: +353 (0)1 288 2159
HARRISON, Alan. The Dean’s Friend. Anthony Raymond (1675-1726), Jonathan Swift and the Irish Language. Illustrated. Dublin, De Búrca, 1999. Fine in illustrated d.j. €35.00
Ireland in the time of Jonathan Swift was a bicultural and bilingual society. This book follows the life and times of the Rev. Dr. Anthony Raymond, a contemporary and friend of Jonathan Swift, and his near neighbour when the Dean visited his country benefice, Laracor near Trim in Co. Meath. Raymond, Vicar of Trim from 1705 until his death in 1726, was also a keen scholar of the Irish language and acted as patron to the coterie of Irish scribes and scholars working in Dublin and Meath.
The book introduces us to this world and to the interface between the two languages and the two cultures. It is a fascinating study of the troubled period after the Battle of the Boyne, encompassing historiography and antiquarianism; contemporary linguistic study and the sociolinguistics of the two languages in contact; Swift and his friends in that context; and the printing and publishing of books in Stuart and early-Georgian Ireland.
The author, a Lecturer in Irish Language and Literature at University College Dublin, is well-known in eighteenth-century scholarship for his work on Swift, John Toland, Dublin Irish scholars and other eighteenth century topics, and for being one of the recent co-editors of the last nine volumes of the prestigious journal Eighteenth-Century Ireland/Iris an Dá Chultúr.