Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin in 1667, several months after the death of his father. He was educated at Kilkenny College and Trinity College Dublin. He then worked in England as secretary to the statesman Sir William Temple, whose household included a young girl, Esther Johnson, later Swift's close friend 'Stella'. He was ordained in the Church of Ireland and wrote A Tale of a Tub, a satire on religious quarrels. In London he became a leading political writer for the Tory government of Queen Anne. In 1713 he was made Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, a post he held for the rest of his life. He wrote many pamphlets defending Irish interests, including the Drapier's Letters. Gulliver's Travels (1726) sends its hero to a land of tiny people, a land of giants, a flying island and a country ruled by wise horses, satirizing human nature and politics. A Modest Proposal (1729) ironically suggests that the poor of Ireland sell their children as food. In his last years he lost his mental faculties. He died in Dublin in 1745.

Jonathan Swift is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: An Anglican clergyman who accepted the doctrines of the Church of England. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911) (via Wikisource)