Jonathan Swift is generally recognized as the English language’s most accomplished prose satirist. Born of an Anglo-Irish family in Dublin, Ireland, in 1667, he worked in England for ten years (1689-99) as private secretary to the British statesman Sir William Temple, becoming ordained as a priest in the Anglican Church in 1696. In 1704 Swift published his first major work, A Tale of a Tub, a sharp, ironic attack on corruption in religion and letters. Over the next several years, he published numerous shorter works—essays, articles, pamphlets—on political, religious, and social issues. In 1710, when the Tory party won political power from the Whigs, Tory leaders induced Swift to change sides (he had been a Whig), and for four years he was a leading propagandist for the Tory cause. His political influence ended when the Whigs regained control in 1714, and Swift returned to Ireland, where he became Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. He wrote little for the next six years, beginning Gulliver’s Travels in 1721, while at the same time resuming work on other more overtly political subjects (as in The Drapier’s Letters and A Modest Proposal). It was Gulliver’s Travels, however, that won him his widest audience.
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