[ Michael Foot, sometime leader of the Labour Party. ] Autograph Manuscript, extensively revised, of an early draft of his book 'The Pen and the Sword: A Year in the Life of Jonathan Swift'.

Heavily influenced by its author's own journalistic career, 'The Pen and the Sword' is not only of great significance in the development of Michael Foot's thinking, but is also an important work in the study of Jonathan Swift. The book was a firm success, going through four printings between 1957 and 2008. It was first published in London by Macgibbon and Kee, with the subtitle 'A Year in the Life of Jonathan Swift' (the year in question being 1710). With the third edition of the book (Collins, 1984) the subtitle had changed to 'Jonathan Swift and the Power of the Press', and this was retained when it was reprinted by Faber & Faber in 2008. Kenneth O. Morgan, in his entry on Foot in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, recognises the book's significance, and discusses it at length: 'Foot had not, however, spent all his time out of parliament since 1955 in impotent party intrigues. He had also seized the opportunity to develop those literary ambitions he had long cherished. Following up the suggestion of his father, Isaac, he now turned to the unexpected subject of Dean Swift and his role in the politics of Queen Anne's reign, which saw the downfall politically of the mighty duke of Marlborough. Other influences also pushed him towards Swift as a subject - George Orwell had hailed Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels' as a protest against 'state tyranny' (Orwell, 'Politics vs. Literature', Polemic, 5, Sept-Oct 1946), while various of Foot's assorted literary heroes, including Hazlitt, Byron, and Wells, had all given Swift a special place in their cultural Valhalla. Swift himself, a strange, tormented man with nevertheless a special place for women in his regard and his affections, appealed to Foot as a vivid, angular personality. More important still, Swift was a public commentator and critic whose audacity Foot hugely admired and whose pamphlet 'Conduct of the Allies' (1711) had transformed the politics of Anne's reign during wartime, much as Foot's own 'Guilty Men' had sought to do during a later war. Thus it was that Foot wrote 'The Pen and the Sword' (1957), a radically different and far more substantial work than he had ever previously attempted. | Foot's book depicted a time of immense political crisis at a key moment during the War of Spanish Succession. Swift's mordant pen dramatically dished the whig government and sold the idea of a tory peace. He persuaded the political world that the war against Louis XIV was not one of national defence but a squalid conflict maintained for corrupt financial reasons by the whig ministers and their allies, and especially by the nation's hero, the duke of Marlborough. Opinion turned against the great man, the peace of Utrecht was concluded with France, and the queen created peers to drive its terms through the Lords. Marlborough was cast into the dust. Foot depicted key characters such as Harley and St John with colour and passion. But his main theme was the congenial one of the relations of press and parliament. He saw Swift's intervention as a great landmark for the liberties of the press and the sacred cause of freedom of expression. The happy outcome of Swift's polemic was the ending of a war. The tory Swift was treated fairly, while the book was firmly anchored in first-hand printed material of the period. It long survived as a well-respected scholarly account of an important phase in British politics and proved that Foot could write serious history as well as journalistic polemic.' The present manuscript is in good overall condition, on aged paper, with wear to the extremities of a few leaves, and a little rust spotting from paperclips. The manuscript is entirely in pencil, is an early draft of the book, extensively revised. On first examination it was found to be in complete disorder. After careful reordering it appears to be to all intents complete, although a few mistakes may have been made in the sequence. It totals 606pp., with the early chapters (1-4) in 4to (288pp.) and the later chapters (5-13 and epilogue) in folio (309pp.). There is an additional passage of 9pp., 8vo, from an unknown chapter, possibly intended as a revision. Most of the chapters are accompanied by covering pages bearing a long epigram, and three chapters (6, 8 and 9) are each accompanied by a page of numbered citations. The following description is divided into three parts. ONE: Early chapters in 4to, totalling 288pp. Comprising: Chapter I, 92pp. (in six parts, each separately paginated); Chapter 2, 82pp. (lacking one page); Chapter 4, 36pp. (first part only); unnamed chapter (Chapter 3?) of 74pp. (lacking one page); and the final four pages of another. TWO: Later chapters in folio, totalling 309pp. Comprising: Chapters 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and Epilogue, totalling 308pp., folio. With unnamed chapter (Chapter 7?) of 55pp. (lacking two pages); and 16pp. (paginated 24-39) of another unnamed chapter. THREE: Passage totalling 9pp., 8vo (paginated 9-17), with a few emendations.