Arbuthnotiana: The Story of the St. Alb-ns Ghost (1712) A Catalogue of Dr. Arbuthnot's Library (1779) — Background and Themes

A Ghost with Political Teeth

The anonymous Story of the St. Alb-ns Ghost is not a supernatural tale but a partisan allegory. Its narrative vigor, as Köster notes, can carry a modern reader over topical obscurities. The pamphlet was pirated within a week of its first appearance, suggesting immediate demand. Swift’s diary entry for 22 February 1712 records that Lady Masham made him read it aloud, and that both he and she suspected he was the author—though he denied it. The ambiguity has persisted: later editors regularly included the piece among Swift’s minor works. The text itself offers few internal clues to authorship, but its brisk, ironic tone and its focus on political maneuvering align it with the Scriblerian mode.

The Catalogue as Autobiography

The second item, A Catalogue of the ... Library of ... Dr. Arbuthnot, records the sale that began on Tuesday, 21 December 1779. It lists hundreds of lots, from pamphlets and medical texts to multi-volume sets of classical authors. The range is telling: alongside Boerhaave’s Praxis Medica and works on anatomy and physic stand editions of Horace, Virgil, Racine, and Molière, as well as Pope’s Homer and Swift’s works. The presence of French titles—Fénelon, Voltaire, Scarron—suggests a reader comfortable with continental letters. The catalogue also includes a copy of Arbuthnot’s own Miscellaneous Works (lot 14), as if the physician’s library was being offered back to the world that had known him.

Diction and the Scriblerian Voice

Köster’s introduction draws attention to the stylistic features that connect the ghost story to Arbuthnot’s known writings. The pamphlet’s diction is pointed and economical, its sentences balanced between mock-heroic gravity and colloquial thrust. Phrases such as “a pretty 2 penny Pamphlet” (Swift’s description) hint at the slightness of the format, but the political stakes were real: the story targets the Duke of Marlborough and the Whig ministry. The author’s choice to frame attack as ghostly testimony is itself a Scriblerian device, allowing satire to wear a mask of supernatural authority. Even without certainty of authorship, the piece exemplifies the tactical use of persona in early eighteenth-century political writing.

Evidence of a Reader’s Habits

The catalogue entries reveal not only what Arbuthnot owned but how he organized his books. The lots are grouped by format—folios, octavos, duodecimos—and by language. Medical works sit alongside poetry; theology next to travel narratives. Lot 32, “Malcolm’s treatise of music, sewed 1721,” suggests a practical interest in the art, while lot 38, “Mitchell’s poems, 2 v. l. p. 1729,” indicates a taste for contemporary verse in large-paper copies. The presence of multiple editions of classical historians (Livy, Polybius, Thucydides) points to a scholarly bent. Yet the catalogue is also a commercial document: the auctioneer’s language is brisk, the lots numbered consecutively, and the sale clearly designed to attract bidders beyond Arbuthnot’s immediate circle.

Readers approaching these texts should attend to the interplay between the two halves: the ghost story shows Arbuthnot’s world in motion, while the catalogue freezes it at a later moment. Neither piece is self-contained; both gain meaning from the political and intellectual contexts that Köster sketches. The volume rewards those who read for detail—a telling lot number, a disputed attribution, a phrase that echoes through the Scriblerian canon.

I keep thinking about how a library catalog can feel like a ghost story—what a person chose to keep, and what that says about them. The Arbuthnot pieces left that ache of quiet intimacy, and it surfaced again while I lingered over Sketches in the House: The Story of a Memorable Session (1893) — Context and Discussion. Both feel like peeking into rooms where the owners have just stepped out.