A short life of the author
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) was born on 30 November 1667 in Dublin, the posthumous son of an English-born lawyer. He was raised in genteel poverty by his uncle, Godwin Swift, educated at Kilkenny Grammar School and Trinity College Dublin, and ordained in the Church of Ireland. His career was shaped by the tension between his English literary ambitions and his Irish situation — he considered himself an Englishman exiled in Ireland, though he became, paradoxically, one of the most effective champions of Irish rights.
Life and Career
Swift’s first important position was as secretary to Sir William Temple at Moor Park, Surrey (1689–1699), where he met Esther Johnson (“Stella”), the young woman who would become his closest companion and whose exact relationship to Swift — they may or may not have been secretly married — remains the most debated question in Swift biography. At Moor Park he also began his literary career with A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books, both published anonymously in 1704.
A Tale of a Tub is one of the most extraordinary prose works of the early eighteenth century: an allegory of the corruption of the Christian churches (Catholic, Anglican, and Dissenting) that spirals into a brilliant, manic satire of intellectual pretension. Queen Anne was reportedly so offended by the work’s irreverence that it cost Swift the English bishopric he coveted; he was instead made Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, in 1713 — a post he held until his death.
In London, Swift moved in the highest political circles. He was an intimate of the Tory ministers Robert Harley and Henry St John, whose administration he supported in The Examiner and the devastating The Conduct of the Allies (1711). After the fall of the Tories in 1714, Swift returned to Dublin permanently.
The Dublin decades produced his greatest work. The Drapier’s Letters (1724–1725), written pseudonymously, mobilised Irish public opinion against an English scheme to impose a debased coinage on Ireland and made Swift a national hero. Gulliver’s Travels (1726), published anonymously by Benjamin Motte in London, was an immediate and enormous success. A Modest Proposal (1729), in which Swift suggested that the Irish poor should sell their children as food to the English landlords, is the most famous work of sustained irony in any language.
Swift suffered from what was probably Ménière’s disease — attacks of vertigo, deafness, and nausea that worsened with age. In his final years he suffered severe cognitive decline, probably from dementia. He died on 19 October 1745 and was buried in St Patrick’s Cathedral beside Stella. His epitaph, which he wrote himself, declares that he lies where “savage indignation can no longer lacerate his heart.”
Major Works and Themes
Swift’s great subject is human pride — the intellectual, political, and moral vanity that leads individuals and nations to absurdity and cruelty. His method is irony so thorough and so unsettling that readers are never entirely sure where they stand.
Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is the masterpiece. Lemuel Gulliver’s four voyages — to Lilliput (where men are six inches tall and their politics are proportionately petty), Brobdingnag (where men are giants and Gulliver is the insect), Laputa (where intellectuals are so absorbed in abstract thought they cannot function), and the land of the Houyhnhnms (where rational horses govern brutish, human-like Yahoos) — constitute the most searching critique of human nature in English literature. The final voyage, in which Gulliver comes to despise his own species, has provoked three centuries of debate about Swift’s misanthropy.
A Modest Proposal (1729) is the supreme example of satirical irony: the narrator’s calm, reasonable tone as he proposes eating Irish babies is so perfectly sustained that it forces the reader to confront the real horror of English policy toward Ireland.
Critical Reception and Legacy
Swift was recognised in his own time as the greatest prose writer in the language. Pope, Arbuthnot, and Gay were his collaborators and friends (collectively, the Scriblerus Club). His influence on English satire is total: Voltaire, Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, and every subsequent political satirist writes in his shadow. Gulliver’s Travels has never been out of print and has been adapted, illustrated, and reimagined in every medium.
Key Works
- A Tale of a Tub (1704)
- The Battle of the Books (1704)
- The Drapier’s Letters (1724–1725)
- Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
- A Modest Proposal (1729)
- Journal to Stella (1766–1768, posthumous)
Collecting Swift
Swift is one of the great collecting authors of the eighteenth century, with Gulliver’s Travels as the centrepiece of a rich and complex bibliography.
Gulliver’s Travels (1726, Benjamin Motte, London) was first published as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World under the pseudonym “Lemuel Gulliver.” The first edition is in two octavo volumes. It was enormously popular — the first printing of 10,000 copies sold out within a week — but Motte made unauthorized changes to the text, and there are multiple states and issues. The bibliographic situation is complex and has been the subject of extensive scholarly work. First editions in contemporary binding bring $20,000–$80,000 depending on issue and condition. Faulkner’s Dublin edition (1735), which restores Swift’s text, is also collected.
A Tale of a Tub (1704) first editions bring $2,000–$8,000. A Modest Proposal (1729) was a Dublin pamphlet; genuine first editions are scarce and bring $5,000–$20,000.
Swift manuscripts and autograph letters are rare but surface at auction. His hand is clear and distinctive. Letters bring $2,000–$15,000 depending on content and recipient. The major Swift archives are at the Huntington Library, the Pierpont Morgan Library, and Trinity College Dublin.