Angus Ross is one of the top people in Augustan prose studies, and his annotations for this edition are well done. For college students and those with college educations who are reading A Tale of a Tub and its associated works, the introduction and appended works are sufficient to give an overview. The Tale is an "impossible" work, and giving any student a complete review is impossible, as it is a work that opens every category of question, every matter of philosophy, religion, history, and rhetoric, and Ross splits the difference admirably. This annotations sometimes explain the self-evident, but he rarely misses a vital spot that needs explanation. On the other hand, the annotations are all in end note format, and so students and readers who are unfamiliar with Augustan history and the literary context of the work have to continually flip back and forth to "get the jokes." Simply moving to real footnotes would make an enormous difference for readers (e.g. the 1920 and 1958 Oxford UP standard editions edited by Guthkelch and Smith).
The other works in the volume are a nicely eclectic selection. The W. W. Norton Selected Works of Swift is better at giving the author's range, but Ross picks well and gives a nice representation here. The effect is to not only fully situate the Tale (even giving space to the silly Thomas Swift), but to give a snapshot of early Swift.
For anyone teaching, or teaching him or herself, this greatest of Swift's prose satires, this is far and away the best, affordable edition.
