ABSTRACT
Jonathan Swift was proud of his gift for trickery – of his ability to use deceptive fictions to win, baffle and provoke readers. In the first two decades of the eighteenthcentury, Swift’s experiments in shamming or ‘biting’ (to use his own term) ranged from small-scale efforts at circulating false news to the publication of fake memoirs to aid his ministerial allies.1 This chapter will focus on two of Swift’s most successful publications which can be elucidated through knowledge of traditions of shamming: his bite in 1708 concerning the astrologer John Partridge, and Lemuel Gulliver’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World (1726). Like Defoe, Swift employed shamming to further his career and win attention for his views, with intriguing consequences for the reception of publications both by and about him.
