Swift was born in Dublin. He studied at Kilkenny Grammar School (1674-82), Trinity College in Dublin (1682-89), receiving his B.A. in 1868 and M.A. in 1692. When the anti-Catholic Revolution of the year 1688 aroused reaction in Irland, Swift moved in security to the household of Sir William Temple at Moor Park, Surrey, in England. He worked there as a secretary (1689-95, 1696-99). In 1695 he was ordained in the Church of Ireland (Anglican), Dublin. After Temple's death in 1699 Swift returned to Ireland, making also several trips to London and gaining fame with his essays. Throughout the reign of Queen Anne (1702-14) Swift was one of the central characters in the literary and political life of London.

From 1695 to 1696 Swift was vicar of Kilroot, Laracor from 1700, and prebendary of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin (1701). Between the years 1707 and 1709 he was emissary for the Irish clergy in London. Swift contributed to the 'Bickerstaff Papers' and to the Tattler in 1708-09. He was cofounder of the Scriblerus Club, which included such member as Pope, Gay, Congreve and Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford.

In 1710 Swift tried to open a political career among Whigs but changed his party and took over the Tory journal The Examiner. With the accession of George I, the Tories lost political power and Swift withdrew to Ireland. From 1713 to 1742 he was dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral. Swift died in Dublin on October 19, 1745.

Swift wrote a great deal of prose, chiefly in the form of pamphlets. His religious writing is little read today. Swift's most famous works include THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS (1697), exploring the merits of the ancients and the moderns in literature, A TALE OF A TUB (1704), a religious satire, ARGUMENTS AGAINST ABOLISHING CHRISTIANITY (1708), also a religious satire, where the narrator argues for the preservation of the Christian religion as a social necessity, DRAPIER'S LETTERS (1724), against the monopoly granted by the English government to William Wood to provide the Irish with copper coinage, Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A MODEST PROPOSAL (1729), where the narrator with horrifying logic recommends, that Irish poverty can solved by the breeding up their infants as food for the rich. When Peter O'Toole read it - for some reason - in the reopening of the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin in 1984, several members from the audience departed.

OTHER TRAVELLER'S TALES: Homer's Odyssey, Marco Polo's Travels, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, adventures of Baron Münchausen by Rudolf Eric Raspe (1737-1794), etc.

Gulliver's Travels (1726) - Defoe's novel about Robinson Crusoe had appearared in 1719 and in the same vein Swift makes Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon and a sea captain, recount his adventures. In part one, Gulliver is wrecked on an island where human beings are six inches tall. The Lilliputians have wars, and conduct clearly laughable with their self-importance and vanities - these human follies only reduced into a miniature scale. Gulliver's second voyage takes him to Brobdingnag. He meets giants who are practical but do not understand abstractions. In the third voyage contemporary scientist are held up for ridicule: science is shown to be futile unless it is applicable to human betterment. Gulliver travels to the flying island of Laputa and the nearby continent and capital of Lagado. There he meets pedants obsessed with their own special field and utterly ignorant of the rest of the life. He also meets Struldbrughs, who are immortal and, as a result, utterly miserable. In the fourth part Gulliver visits the land of Houyhnhnms, where horses are intelligent but human beings are not. The horses are served with degenerate creatures called Yahoos, demonstrating that human race would destroy itself without divine aid.

For further reading: The Life of Jonathan Swift by Henry Craik (1882); The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift by Ricardo Quintano (1936); Swift: An Introduction by Ricardo Quintano (1955); Swift and Ireland by Oliver W. Ferguson (1962); Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age by Irvin Ehrenpreis (1962-83, 3 vols.); Jonathan Swift by David Nokes (1985);

Selected works:

• A TALE OF A TUB, 1704
• THE BATTLE OF BOOKS, 1704
• PREDICTIONS FOR THE ENSUING YEAR, 1708 (as Isaac Bickerstaff)
• JOURNAL TO STELLA, (written 1710-13, published 1766)
• DRAPIER'S LETTERS, 1724-25
• TRAVELS INTO SEVERAL REMOTE NATIONS OF THE WORLD... BY LEMUEL GULLIVER. 1726 - Gulliverin retket - films: animated version in 1939, dir. by David Fleischer; in 1976 dir. by Peter Hunt
• A MODERS PROPOSAL, 1729
• THE WORKS, 1784 (17 vols., rev. 1812, 24 vols.)
• WORKS, 1814 (19 vols., ed. by Sir Walter Scott)
• PROSE WORKS, 1939-68 (14 vols.)
• THE WRITINGS OF JONATHAN SWIFT, 1973
• SWIFT'S IRISH PAMPHLETS, 1991
• THE INTELLIGENCER, 1992
• A MODEST PROPOSAL AND OTHER SATIRES, 1995