Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for the Tories), poet and cleric. He became Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. 

He is remembered for books and poems he wrote like: Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the most well known prose satirist in the English language. He is less well known for his poetry.

Swift originally published all of his work under pseudonyms — such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier — or anonymously. He is known for being a master of two styles of satire; the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.


Works

Swift was famous for his satires. The most recent collection of his prose works (Herbert Davis, ed. Basil Blackwell, 1965-) comprises fourteen volumes. A recent edition of his complete poetry (Pat Rodges, ed. Penguin, 1983) is 953 pages long. One edition of his correspondence (David Woolley, ed. P. Lang, 1999) fills three volumes.

 Legacy 
John Ruskin named him as one of the three people in history who were the most influential for him.

References

 Other websites 
 e-texts of Swift's works
 at The Online Books Page

 at Gulliver's Travels

Category:1667 births
Category:1745 deaths
Category:Alumni of the University of Oxford
Category:Anglican priests
Category:Christian writers
Category:English Anglicans
Category:Essayists
Category:Irish poets
Category:Writers from Dublin