For most general readers, the name Jonathan Swift is associated only with his satiric masterpiece Gulliver's Travels. They are not aware that, in addition to it and hundreds of poems, he wrote a great deal of nonfictional prose, much of it of considerable interest, significance, and excellence. This essay will focus on the "nonfiction," including A Tale of a Tub,An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, the Journal to Stella,The Examiner papers, The Drapier's Letters, and A Modest Proposal. These works show Swift as a complex, fascinating man, controversial in his own day and the subject of critical controversy to the present.

Swift was born in Ireland of English parents. His father and three uncles were solicitors who had immigrated to Ireland at, or just before, the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, seeking better fortunes than Herfordshire promised them. His mother was born in Ireland, of parents who...