Headnote

Published 1745; copy text 1745 (see Textual Account). The title from the title page runs as follows: ‘DIRECTIONS TO SERVANTS. By the Revd. Dr. SWIFT, D.S.P.D.’

Directions to Servants had been begun, according to Swift, at about the same time as Polite Conversation, and references to his efforts to complete the two works run together through his correspondence of the 1730s (see Headnote to Polite Conversation); but between the completion of Polite Conversation and the final preparation of Directions Swift's memory deteriorated, and Directions would in the end be sent to press incomplete and in some internal disorder, finally achieving publication shortly after his death (see Textual Account).

Directions is first heard of in a letter of 28 August 1731 to Gay and the Duchess of Queensberry. After mentioning Polite Conversation, Swift continues: ‘The other is of almost equal importance; Imay call it the whole duty of servants, in about twenty several Stations from the Steward & waiting woman down to the Scullion & Pantry boy.’ On 12 June 1732 he wrote to Pope, again discussing Polite Conversation first, and then turning to Directions: ‘you shall never hear of it until it is printed, and then you shall be left to guess. Nay I have another of the same age, which will require a long time to perfect, and is worse than the former, in which I will serve you the same way.’ Swift places the origins of both works in the early years of the first decade of the century; but it is Directions that he here singles out as requiring ‘a long time to perfect’. Although he would write pessimistically to Pope on 1 November 1734 about the prospect of finishing ‘three Treatises’, Directions would in the end be the only one left substantially incomplete.

Orrery, who disliked the vulgarity of Directions, would later testify that ‘I remember the manuscript handed about, and much applauded, in his lifetime.’ As Swift began to lose his memory, he repeatedly enquired about the whereabouts of the manuscript (there were ultimately at least two: see Textual Account, and for a fragment additional to the printed text, Associated Materials VI); and from these enquiries it appears that ‘Advice’, rather than Directions, may have been the original title, and that the work was divided between two volumes.