Battle-sites of books

This chapter describes the physical space and imaginative significance of the library in Jonathan Swift’s ‘Battel of the Books’ and relates it to the anthology of improving literature published by Richard Steele and George Berkeley in 1714 as The Ladies Library. It considers the role libraries and the idea of the library have in social life in the early eighteenth century: how they define knowledge, grant or restrict access to it, and shape the behaviour of those seeking it. The chapter notes that conservative or nostalgic attitudes to knowledge and society exist alongside modern features of book production, distribution, and use in these two texts, and in the career of Swift more generally. The chapter also notes the gendering of knowledge, and the role of gender in restricting access to knowledge and regulating behaviour through books.