The Battle of the Books
Jonathan Swift worked for William Temple during the time of the controversy, and Swift's "A Tale of a Tub" (1703/1705) takes part in the debate. From its first publication, Swift added a short satire entitled "The Battle of the Books" to the "Tale of a Tub." In this piece, there is an epic battle fought in a library when various books come alive and attempt to settle the arguments between moderns and ancients. In Swift's satire, he skilfully manages to avoid saying which way victory fell. He portrays the manuscript as having been damaged in places, thus leaving the end of the battle up to the reader.
William Gilbert (author)
In 1859, Gilbert published a novel, "Margaret Meadows, A Tale for the Pharisees". This was made into a play called "Mary Warner" by Tom Taylor in 1869, who was forced to pay Gilbert a settlement for plagiarising his novel. Gilbert's most successful early novel was "Shirley Hall Asylum: Or the Memoirs of a Monomaniac" (1863), which told the stories of inmates of a lunatic asylum from the point of view of an escapee driven mad by trying to solve the problem of perpetual motion. Gilbert's first novel published under his own name was "Christmas Tale: The Rosary, a Legend of Wilton Abbey" (1863). The story purports to be the written confession of one Alicia Longspée, who had been Lady Abbess of the Benedictine Convent at Wilton in the 15th century. Gilbert's next novel, "De Profundis, a tale of the social deposits" (1864) is the story of a foundling rescued by a Scottish Fusilier Guardsman stationed in London. The foundling grows up to marry the guardsman's daughter. Another 1864 book was "The Goldsworthy Family, or the country attorney", about an unethical lawyer.