Jonathan Swift

Who is Jonathan Swift?

Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin in 1667 and became the foremost satirist writing in English. An Anglican clergyman, he served as Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin from 1713 until his death, and the post gave him a platform to defend Irish interests against English misrule. His masterpiece, Gulliver's Travels (1726), disguised as a traveller's adventure story, is a devastating satire on human vanity, politics and pretensions to reason. His pamphlet A Modest Proposal (1729), which ironically suggests the Irish poor sell their children as food, remains one of the most famous works of savage irony ever written. Other works include A Tale of a Tub and the Drapier's Letters, which rallied Irish opposition to a debased coinage. Swift left much of his fortune to found a hospital for the mentally ill.

Sources: Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (1726) · Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal (1729) · Leo Damrosch, Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World (2013)