A Tale of a Tub
A Tale of a Tub was the first major work written by Jonathan Swift, arguably his most difficult satire and perhaps his most masterly. The "Tale" is a prose parody divided into sections each delving into the morals and ethics of the English. Composed between 1694 and 1697, it was eventually published in 1704. It was long regarded as a satire on religion, and has famously been attacked for that, starting with William Wotton.
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.