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The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers
By Jonathan Swift
Isaac Bickerstaff Esq was a pseudonym used by Jonathan Swift as part of a hoax to predict the death of then famous Almanacâmaker and astrologer John Partridge.
âAll Fools Dayâ (now known as April Fools Day which falls on 1 April) was Swiftâs favorite of holidays and he often used this day to aim his satirically biting wit at non-believers in an attempt to âmake sin and folly bleed.â Disgruntled by Partridgeâs sarcastic attack about the âinfallible Churchâ written in his 1708 issue of Merlinus Almanac, Swift projected carefully 3 letters and one Eulogy as an elaborate plan to âpredictâ Partridgeâs âinfallible deathâ to be revealed on April 1, All Fools Day.
The first of the three letters, Predictions for the Year 1708, published in January 1708, predicts, among other things, the death of Partridge by a âraging fever.â The second letter, The Accomplishment of the First of Mr. Bickerstaffâs Predictions, published in March 1708, Swift writes not as Bickerstaff but as a âman employed in the Revenueâ where he âconfirmsâ the imaginary Bickerstaffâs prediction. To accompany The Accomplishments Swift also publishes an Elegy for Partridge in which, typical of Swiftâs satire, he blames not only Partridge, but those who purchase the Almanacs as well.
The hoax, gaining immense popularity, plagued Partridge till the real end of his life. Mourners, who believed him to be dead, often kept him awake at night crying outside his window. Accounts of an undertaker arriving at his house to arrange drapes for the mourning, an elegy being printed and even a gravestone being carved, all culminate to Partridge publishing a letter in hopes to have a last word on the matter and proclaim (and reclaim) himself as living. In 1709 Swift, writing as Bickerstaff for the last time, publishes A Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff in which he abandons any real attempt to maintain the hoax. Bickerstaff counter-argues Partridge's letter of proclamation disputing, â They were sure no man alive ever to writ such damned stuff as this.â He goes on to sarcastically reason that âdeath is defined by all Philosophers [as a] separation of the soul and body. [Partridgeâs wife] has gone about for some time to every Alley in the neighborhoodâ¦that her husband had neither life nor soul in him.â
About: The Bickerstaff-Partridge PapersBy Jonathan SwiftIsaac Bickerstaff Esq was a pseudonym used by Jonathan Swift as part of a hoax to predict the death of then famous Almanacâmaker and astrologer John Partridge.
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