Jonathan Swift

The Anglo-Irish satirist and political pamphleteer Jonathan Swift is generally considered the most effective prose writer of the 18^th century. His pamphlets, letters, prose, and poetry satirize human idiocy and pretence so impassionately that one might get an impression that Swift hated men. But it was his deep love of this self-deceiving humanity that could not let him remain indifferent to its illnesses, which he hoped to cure with his sad humour.

Jonathan Swift (Nov. 30, 1667 Dublin, Ireland - Oct. 19, 1745, Dublin) was born of English parents and studied at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1689. hoping to start a political career, he went to England as a private secretary to Sir William Temple, a rich aristocrat, essayist, and former ambassador to Holland. But his relations with his employer got worse, and in 1694, young Swift came back to Ireland to take religious orders. However, preaching in a country parish was unbearable, and making peace with Temple, he returned to Temples household in 1696 to remain there until Temple's death in 1699.

In those years Swift began to write his first odes. Later he discovered a gift for humorous religious and political prose works. In A Tale of a Tub (1704) the excesses of religion, literature and academic learning were laughed at, and The Battle of the Books (1704) presented a mock contest between ancient and modern authors. These strikingly original books so pitilessly ridiculed various forms of pretentious pedantry in literature and religion that they raised serious doubts about Swift's own religious faith. Queen Anne was hurt, and Swift lost his chance for ecclesiastical promotion in England. Yet, both works did see print in 1704, and their success brought Swift into a brief collaboration with The Tatler, a popular journal published by J. Addison and R Steele.

Swift started his Journal to Stella in 1710. “Stella” in this journal was his personal name for Esther Johnson, who was then living in Dublin. His intimate letters of endearment reveal a quite different aspect of this great satirist's mysterious personality. ^Q

After the death of Sir William Temple, Swift again retreated to Ireland and preached in a small rural community. In 1710, he turned his political views towards the new Tory government, and in 1713, as an appreciation of his skilful pamphlets, Queen Anne made him dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Swift never changed his employment again, and through his writing championed the Irish cause. In his biting pamphlets he protested against the suffering under British rule, and encouraged the Irish to impose a boycott on British goods. For the Irish cause Swift wrote A Modest Proposal (1729), which embodies the cynical suggestion that the children of the Irish poor be sold for food to the wealthy, thus achieving general profit.

Swift's masterwork, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, popularly known as Gulliver's Travels, was published anonymously in 1726 and became an instant success. Originally, Swift intended it as an allegorical and sharp attack on the arrogance and two-facedness of contemporary courts, statesmen, and political parties, but while writing this book, he integrated his new mocking thoughts on human society. Apart from its satirical aim, it is so imaginatively and simply written that it has remained a favourite children's book.

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