Jonathan Swift

Author Code: IJSX

Swift was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and spent a great deal of his time in England. He returned to Ireland in 1694 and was ordained and, once again, went to England in 1696. His first works were the satires A Tale of a Tub (1696-99) and The Battle of the Books (1697), both of which were published in 1704. Between 1710 and 1713, Swift wrote a number of letters to Esther Johnson, which would later become The Journal of Stella, and which was highly critical of the Whigs. He returned to Ireland again in 1713 when he was appointed dean of St. Patrick's in Dublin. His most popular work, Gulliver's Travels, was published in 1726. Swift's output was enormous and included political writings, such as The Fable of Midas (1711), pamphlets on Ireland, politics and religious issues, and poetry. Swift suffered from a form of vertigo that eventually made him insane.