Gulliver's Travels (Author Biography)

Author Biography

Swift was born in 1667 in Ireland of English parents. Swift's father died shortly before he was born, leaving Jonathan, his sister, and their mother dependent on his father's family. Their mother moved to England and left him with a nurse for his first three years. He attended Ireland's best schools, including Trinity College in Dublin, which is where he was in 1689, when civil unrest forced him and other Protestants to flee Ireland for England. In England, Swift began to work as secretary to scholar and former Parliament member Sir William Temple and lived at his home until Temple's death in 1699. Swift was exposed to many new books, ideas, and important and influential people during this time. Ordained as an Anglican (Episcopalian) priest in 1695, Swift wanted a career in the church. Unfortunately, his satirical writings, such as A Tale of a Tub and Battle of the Books (both 1704) offended Queen Anne, who made sure he could not get a decent position. Swift found a job as an Anglican clergyman in Ireland instead.

During this period, Swift met a woman he called Stella, whose real name was Esther Johnson, and wrote his Journal to Stella 1710 – 1713). No one really knows if the two were just friends or were romantically involved, although rumors persisted that the two had secretly married. At this time Swift also changed his political allegiance from the Whigs, who were more religiously tolerant, to the Tories, whom he felt were more supportive of the Anglican Church. Still, Swift felt that each man should worship God according to his own conscience. His attitude toward the bickering over small religious differences is symbolized in Gulliver's Travels (1726) by the silly dispute in Lilliput over which end of an egg one should crack.

Swift became involved with another woman, Esther Vanhomrigh (called Vanessa), in 1713, but resisted her attempts to make the relationship serious. He continued to write important works, including A Modest Proposal (1729) in which he suggested that the wealthy eat the babies of the Irish poor. He was, of course, using satire to point out the callousness of the wealthy toward the poor. Swift's pseudonymously written The Drapier's Letters, published in 1724, denounced England's plan to force the Irish to use a new currency that would prevent the Irish from trading with other countries. Swift hated how England took advantage of the Irish. This popular and controversial essay actually forced the English to discard their currency plan, making Swift an Irish hero to this day (the Irish carefully guarded his anonymity to protect him). He spent several years writing Gulliver's Travels, inspired by an assignment to parody travelogues given him by his group of writing friends, the Scriblerus Club.

Although Swift had hoped for a better position in the church after Queen Anne's death in 1714, the Tories' loss of power meant he could not hope to improve his status. He remained dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral until 1742, when Swift was declared of unsound mind. Although some early biographers attributed his mental weakness to senility caused by syphilis (some say this disease had prevented him from marrying), modern biographers now suggest he was the victim of an inner ear disease which was compounded by memory loss and speech difficulty caused by a stroke. Regardless, he was sent to a mental institution, where he died in 1745. He was buried next to Esther Johnson in St. Patrick's Cathedral.