SWIFT, Jonathan. A Proposal for the Universal Use of IRISH Manufacture, in Cloaths and Furniture of Houses, &c. Utterly Rejecting and Renouncing Every Thing Wearable That Comes from ENGLAND. Written in the Year 1720.

Printed in the Year 1758. [Published by George Faulkner, Dublin?]. 12mo. pp. [ii], [1], 26-316. Contemporary full calf, title in gilt on recent red morocco label on professionally rebacked spine. A very good copy.
No copy located on JISC. Not in Bodleian, TCD or NLI.
Faulkner, George (1703-1775), bookseller and printer, was born on 3 April 1703 according to his own statement, but in 1699 according to the obituary in the Dublin Journal. The son of a protestant Dublin victualler, he was educated by Dr Lloyd before being apprenticed (c.1717) to the printer Thomas Hume in Essex St. In 1724 he set up shop at Skinner’s Row with his kinsman, James Hoey, and the following year the two commenced a newspaper, The Dublin Journal, frequently called Faulkner’s Journal. He spent most of 1726 in London, working for the renowned English printer William Bowyer, but on 2 October he brought out in Dublin the first collected edition of the Drapier’s Letters by Jonathan Swift, entitled Fraud detected: or, The Hibernian patriot. Thus began Faulkner’s long and lucrative association with Swift. Queries from the latter’s Considerations upon two bills relating to the clergy, published in the Dublin Journal in February 1732, led to Faulkner’s being ordered into custody by the house of lords on 26 February. He was not convicted, and on being censured in the next parliamentary session (October 1733), he apologised and was discharged without fees. On 7 January 1735 he published, after delays and postponements, Swift’s Works in four volumes, the demand for which was enormous. Two further volumes were added in 1738, and by 1769 the set ran to twenty volumes. Swift’s biographer concludes that ‘the great venture was the foundation of Faulkner’s prosperity. But it is also clear that through the bookseller’s admirable diligence many works by Swift were preserved that would otherwise have been lost’ (Ehrenpreis, iii, 787). Swift’s relations with Faulkner were deliberately ambiguous. He disclaimed any involvement with the Dublin volumes to avoid alienating London printers, but in an oft-quoted letter to the earl of Oxford he referred to Faulkner as ‘the prince of Dublin printers’ (Williams, iv, 222) and when the English printer Benjamin Motte was awarded an injunction stopping the sale of Faulkner’s edition of Swift’s Works in London (28 November 1735), Swift fired off to him a furious letter complaining that English publishers flooded the Irish market at will and that he would do all in his power to support Faulkner (ibid., 493–4).This short satirical work has no author or publisher given, but it is Jonathan Swift; and with a date of 1741 the publisher is most likely George Faulkner in Dublin. A call to boycott English goods and published anonymously, this was Swift’s first polemic after he became Dean of St. Patrick’s. An early printing, from within Swift’s lifetime, in close to fine condition.

[Cat 161]