SOURCE: Wittkowsky, George. “Swift's Modest Proposal: The Biography of an Early Georgian Pamphlet.” Journal of the History of Ideas 4 (January-October 1943): 75-104.

In one of the first major critical essays on A Modest Proposal, Wittkowsky remarks on the work within its contemporary economic context.

There is an almost complete absence of sustained scholarship on the subject of Swift's Modest Proposal. The lesser works even of most major writers in English have been investigated with Gestapo-like thoroughness. Even the minor works of minor writers have received loving attention. And yet toward the Modest Proposal, a major work by a major English writer, scholars have been definitely coy. One searches in vain for a serious critical article on this pamphlet. No book on Swift which I have read has dignified it with a separate chapter. The usual practice in such books is to write a sentence or two of superlative praise...