Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, pamphleteer and Anglican clergyman, widely regarded as the foremost prose satirist in the English language. [1] He served as Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin and wrote Gulliver's Travels, A Tale of a Tub and A Modest Proposal, along with political pamphlets that made him a national figure in Ireland. [2]
Early life and education
Swift was born in Dublin on 30 November 1667, some months after the death of his father, into a family of English descent settled in Ireland. He was educated at Kilkenny College and then at Trinity College, Dublin, where he took his degree in 1686. [1] Political unrest in Ireland drove him to England, where he became secretary to the retired statesman Sir William Temple at Moor Park in Surrey. There he read widely, met Esther Johnson, the "Stella" of his later writings, and began to write.
Swift was ordained in the Church of Ireland in 1695 and later received a doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin, dividing his time for many years between Irish parishes and London political circles. [3]
Political writing
Swift first attracted attention with A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books, published together in 1704. The former, a scathing allegory of religious factionalism and modern learning, established his reputation for dangerous wit and probably damaged his prospects of high church preferment. [2]
In London he wrote for the Whigs and then, from 1710, for Robert Harley's Tory ministry, editing The Examiner and producing The Conduct of the Allies, a pamphlet arguing for an end to the War of the Spanish Succession. His intimate letters from these years were later published as the Journal to Stella. With the death of Queen Anne in 1714 and the fall of the Tories, Swift returned to Ireland and to the deanery of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, which he held for the rest of his life. [1]
Irish causes and major satires
In Ireland Swift became a defender of Irish economic interests against English policy. The Drapier's Letters of 1724, published pseudonymously, so effectively opposed a patent to mint copper coinage for Ireland that the scheme was withdrawn, and the anonymous author was celebrated as a patriot. [3]
Gulliver's Travels, published in 1726, recounts the voyages of Lemuel Gulliver to Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa and the land of the Houyhnhnms, using the form of a travel narrative to satirise politics, science, national pride and human nature itself. [4] A Modest Proposal, issued in 1729, suggested with unbroken deadpan that the poor of Ireland might sell their children as food, a device that turned the calculating language of contemporary economic writing against itself.
Later life and legacy
Swift's later years were marked by the deaths of close friends, by illness now usually attributed to Ménière's disease, and by a decline in his mental faculties. He died in Dublin on 19 October 1745 and was buried in St Patrick's Cathedral beside Esther Johnson, leaving much of his estate to found a hospital for the mentally ill in the city. [1]
His work has remained continuously in print. Gulliver's Travels circulates both as a children's adventure and as a dark study of human limitation, while A Modest Proposal is a standard model of ironic argument. The term Swiftian is used for satire of comparable severity. [2]
