Satire

Polite Conversation in Three Dialogues

by Jonathan Swift

Swift collected the stale phrases of fashionable talk for years and published them in 1738 as three dialogues, in which ladies and gentlemen trade proverbs and pleasantries from the morning visit to the card table. It is presented by an invented editor, Simon Wagstaff, who is proud of every one of them. The dialogues are a record of how the gentry of his day really spoke, which is what makes them so unkind.

The librarian

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Reading time

About 2 hr 25 min

Where to find it

Lilliput

Edition

Project Gutenberg, eBook #60186. In the public domain in the United States.