A biography of the life and works of author, Jonathan Swift.
This paper provides a brief biographical sketch of Jonathan Swift, author of “Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal, and the Proposal for Correcting English. The paper paints a picture of Britain at the time and discusses Swift’s political leanings and how they are reflected in his works. The paper looks at his relationships with women, his satires, and what his critics have said.
Swift was an Irishman by birth, although on both sides his family was English. He was also descended from clergy in the Church of England, and although he was a priest and later a dean in the Church of Ireland, he always aspired to serve in one of England’s great cathedral cities. He wrote a large number of treatises and pamphlets on religion, but they have not stood the test of time as well as his philosophical writings. His childhood was spent in England, on the estate of Sir William Temple. He attended good grammar and high schools, and received a degree from Trinity College, Dublin, where he reportedly `got a degree with difficulty, and was wild, and witty, and poor` (Thackeray, 389). Indeed, although he ascended into the middle ranks of the clergy and had some political influence in London and Dublin for a time, he was never very wealthy, his greatest assets being his education and his writing ability.”