A Tale of a Tub is an early satire mixing a story with many digressions. It follows three brothers, Peter, Martin and Jack, who each inherit a coat and a father's will, and who stand for the Catholic, Anglican and Protestant dissenting churches. Around this tale, the narrator, a rambling modern hack writer, wanders into side essays on madness, criticism and learning. The book mocks religious quarrels and the pretensions of modern scholarship. Its playful, tangled form made it Swift's first major success and is still admired for its inventive wit.
Quotes
It is a maxim, that those to whom everybody allows the second place have an undoubted title to the first.
Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.
Books, the children of the brain.