Jonathan Swift
(1667-1745)
Who Was Jonathan Swift?
Irish author, clergyman and satirist Jonathan Swift grew up fatherless. Under the care of his uncle, he received a bachelor's degree from Trinity College and then worked as a statesman's assistant. Eventually, he became dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Most of his writings were published under pseudonyms. He best remembered for his 1726 book Gulliver's Travels .
Early Life and Education
Irish author and satirist Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland on November 30, 1667. His father, an attorney, also named Jonathan Swift, died just two months before he arrived. Without steady income, his mother struggled to provide for her newborn. Moreover, Swift was a sickly child. It was later discovered that he suffered from Meniere's Disease, a condition of the inner ear that leaves the afflicted nauseous and hard of hearing. In an effort to give her son the best upbringing possible, Swift's mother gave him over to Godwin Swift, her late husband's brother and a member of the respected professional attorney and judges group Gray's Inn. Godwin Swift enrolled his nephew in the Kilkenny Grammar School (1674–1682), which was perhaps the best school in Ireland at the time. Swift's transition from a life of poverty to a rigorous private school setting proved challenging. He did, however, make a fast friend in William Congreve, the future poet and playwright.
At age 14, Swift commenced his undergraduate studies at Trinity College in Dublin. In 1686, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree and went on to pursue a master's. Not long into his research, huge unrest broke out in Ireland. The king of Ireland, England and Scotland was soon to be overthrown. What became known as the Glorious Revolution of 1688 spurred Swift to move to England and start anew. His mother found a secretary position for him under the revered English statesman, Sir William Temple. For 10 years, Swift worked in Surrey's Moor Park and acted as an assistant to Temple, helping him with political errands, and also in the researching and publishing of his own essays and memoirs. Temple was impressed by Swift's abilities and after a time, entrusted him with sensitive and important tasks.
During his Moor Park years, Swift met the daughter of Temple's housekeeper, a girl just 8 years old named Esther Johnson. When they first met, she was 15 years Swift's junior, but despite the age gap, they would become lovers for the rest of their lives. When she was a child, he acted as her mentor and tutor, and gave her the nickname "Stella." When she was of age, they maintained a close but ambiguous relationship, which lasted until Johnson's death. It was rumored that they married in 1716, and that Swift kept of lock of Johnson's hair in his possession at all times.
During his decade of work for Temple, Swift returned to Ireland twice. On a trip in 1695, he took all necessary requirements to become an ordained priest in the Anglican tradition. Under Temple's influence, he also began to write, first short essays and then a manuscript for a later book. In 1699, Temple died. Swift completed the task of editing and publishing his memoirs—not without disputes by several of Temple's family members—and then, grudgingly, accepted a less prominent post as secretary and chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley. After making the long journey to the Earl's estate, Swift was informed the position had been filled. Discouraged but resourceful, he leaned on his priestly qualifications and found work ministering to a pea-sized congregation just 20 miles outside of Dublin. For the next 10 years, he gardened, preached and worked on the house provided to him by the church. He also returned to writing. His first political pamphlet was titled A Discourse on the Contests and Dissentions in Athens and Rome .
In 1704, Swift anonymously released A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books . Tub , although widely popular with the masses, was harshly disapproved of by the Church of England. Ostensibly, it criticized religion, but Swift meant it as a parody of pride. Nonetheless, his writings earned him a reputation in London, and when the Tories came into power in 1710, they asked him to become editor of the Examiner , their official paper. After a time, he became fully immersed in the political landscape and began writing some of the most cutting and well-known political pamphlets of the day, including The Conduct of the Allies , an attack on the Whigs. Privy to the inner circle of Tory government, Swift laid out his private thoughts and feelings in a stream of letters to his beloved Stella. They would later be published as The Journal to Stella .
'Gulliver's Travels' and Later Years
When he saw that the Tories would soon fall from power, Swift returned to Ireland. In 1713, he took the post of dean at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Although he was still in contact with Esther Johnson, it is documented that he engaged in a romantic relationship with Esther Vanhomrigh (whom he called Vanessa). His courtship with her inspired his long and storied poem, "Cadenus and Vanessa." He is also rumored to have had a relationship with the celebrated beauty Anne Long.
While leading his congregation at St. Patrick's, Swift began to write what would become his best-known work. In 1726, at last finished with the manuscript, he traveled to London and benefited from the help of several friends, who anonymously published it as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships — also known, more simply, as Gulliver's Travels . The book was an immediate success and hasn't been out of print since its first run. Interestingly, much of the storyline points to historical events that Swift had lived through years prior during intense political turmoil.
Not long after the celebration of this work, Swift's longtime love, Esther Johnson, fell ill. She died in January 1728. Her life's end moved Swift to write The Death of Mrs. Johnson . Shortly after her death, a stream of Swift's other friends also died, including John Gay and John Arbuthnot. Swift, always bolstered by the people around him, was now quite troubled.
In 1742, Swift suffered from a stroke and lost the ability to speak. On October 19, 1745, Swift died. He was laid to rest next to Esther Johnson inside Dublin's St. Patrick's Cathedral.
QUICK FACTS
- Name: Jonathan Swift
- Birth Year: 1667
- Birth date: November 30, 1667
- Birth City: Dublin
- Birth Country: Ireland
- Gender: Male
- Best Known For: Jonathan Swift was an Irish author and satirist. Best known for writing 'Gulliver's Travels,' he was dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin.
- Writing and Publishing
- Astrological Sign: Sagittarius
- University of Oxford
- Trinity College
- Kilkenny School
- Nacionalities
- Death Year: 1745
- Death date: October 19, 1745
- Death City: Dublin
- Death Country: Ireland
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- Last Updated: April 13, 2021
- Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
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Jonathan Swift summary
Jonathan Swift , (born Nov. 30, 1667, Dublin, Ire.—died Oct. 19, 1745, Dublin), Irish author, the foremost prose satirist in English. He was a student at Dublin’s Trinity College during the anti-Catholic Revolution of 1688 in England. Irish Catholic reaction in Dublin led Swift, a Protestant, to seek security in England, where he spent various intervals before 1714. He was ordained an Anglican priest in 1695. His first major work, A Tale of a Tub (1704), comprises three satiric sketches on religion and learning; he also became known for religious and political essays and impish pamphlets written under the name “Isaac Bickerstaff.” Reluctantly setting aside his loyalty to the Whigs, in 1710 he became the leading writer for the Tories because of their support for the established church. Journal to Stella (written 1710–13) consists of letters recording his reactions to the changing world. As a reward for writing and editing Tory publications, in 1713 he was awarded the deanery of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. He spent nearly all the rest of his life in Ireland, where he devoted himself to exposing English wrongheadedness and their unfair treatment of the Irish. His ironic tract “A Modest Proposal” (1729) proposes ameliorating Irish poverty by butchering children and selling them as food to wealthy English landlords. His famously brilliant and bitter satire Gulliver’s Travels (1726), ostensibly the story of its hero’s encounters with various races and societies in remote regions, reflects Swift’s vision of humanity’s ambiguous position between bestiality and rationality.
Jonathan Swift
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Book contents
- Jonathan Swift in Context
- Copyright page
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Part I Personal
- Chapter 1 Biography
- Chapter 2 Friends and Family
- Chapter 3 Health and Sickness
- Chapter 4 Reason and Unreason
- Part II Publishing History and Legacy
- Part III Literary Background
- Part IV Genres
- Part V The External World
- Part VI Social and Intellectual Topics
- Further Reading
Chapter 1 - Biography
from Part I - Personal
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 May 2024
This chapter provides a biographical overview of Swift’s career. It reconstructs the contexts of Swift’s early life and career in Ireland and England and charts his friendships and allegiances. Swift’s public life was driven, as this chapter shows, by a ‘scribbling itch’ reflected in his twenty-eight crossings of the Irish Sea. But much about his private life remains obscure, not least his relationship with ‘Stella’ and ‘Vanessa’.
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- By Clive Probyn
- Edited by Joseph Hone , University of Newcastle upon Tyne , Pat Rogers , University of South Florida
- Book: Jonathan Swift in Context
- Online publication: 02 May 2024
- Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108917254.004
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Gulliver’s Travels
Jonathan swift: biography.
Jonathan Swift, by Charles Jervas, 1710
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who becameDean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.
Swift is remembered for works such as 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 . He is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms – such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, MB Drapier – or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
Gulliver’s Travels , a large portion of which Swift wrote at Woodbrook House in County Laois, was published in 1726. It is regarded as his masterpiece. As with his other writings, the Travels was published under a pseudonym, the fictional Lemuel Gulliver, a ship’s surgeon and later a sea captain. Some of the correspondence between printer Benj. Motte and Gulliver’s also-fictional cousin negotiating the book’s publication has survived. Though it has often been mistakenly thought of and published in bowdlerised form as a children’s book, it is a great and sophisticated satire of human nature based on Swift’s experience of his times. Gulliver’s Travels is an anatomy of human nature, a sardonic looking-glass, often criticised for its apparent misanthropy. It asks its readers to refute it, to deny that it has adequately characterised human nature and society. Each of the four books—recounting four voyages to mostly fictional exotic lands—has a different theme, but all are attempts to deflate human pride. Critics hail the work as a satiric reflection on the shortcomings of Enlightenment thought.
Additional information on Swift’s life, work, and influence can be found here.
- Jonathan Swift. Provided by : Wikipedia. Located at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Swift . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
- Image of Jonathan Swift. Authored by : Charles Jervas. Located at : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jonathan_Swift_by_Charles_Jervas_detail.jpg . License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright
Jonathan Swift Biography
Birthday: November 30 , 1667 ( Sagittarius )
Born In: Dublin, Ireland
Jonathan Swift , one of the foremost prose satirist in the English language, was also a reputed political pamphleteer, essayist, poet and cleric. Born in Ireland, he lost his father early on in life and was mostly brought up by his uncle. However, with the advent of the Glorious Revolution in Ireland, he was forced to move to England, where he secured employment under Sir William Temple. Here he got a taste of high living and power play. As a young man he often travelled back and forth between Ireland and England. Later, he entered the Church of Ireland, which at that time was a poor cousin of the Church of England. To secure the rights of his church, he began to write pamphlets and finally entered the political arena. However, his political ambition was not long lived and he returned to England for a short period. Soon he was back to Ireland where he became the Dean of St. Patrick Cathedral, a position he held until his death. As a writer, most of his works were written under pseudonyms. Today, he is best remembered for his prose satire, ‘Gulliver’s Travel.’
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Also Known As: Isaac Bickerstaff, M. B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Simon Wagstaff, Esq.
Died At Age: 77
Spouse/Ex-: Esther Johnson (m. 1716)
father: Jonathan Swift Sr.
mother: Abigail Erick
Born Country: Ireland
Poets Novelists
Died on: October 19 , 1745
place of death: Dublin, Ireland
Notable Alumni: Hart Hall, Oxford
City: Dublin, Ireland
education: Trinity College, Dublin, Hart Hall, Oxford
You wanted to know
Where did jonathan swift live for most of his life.
Jonathan Swift lived in Dublin, Ireland for most of his life.
What is Jonathan Swift best known for writing?
Jonathan Swift is best known for writing the satirical novel "Gulliver's Travels."
How did Jonathan Swift's writing style influence later writers?
Jonathan Swift's use of satire and wit in his works influenced later writers such as Voltaire and Mark Twain.
What social issues did Jonathan Swift address in his writings?
Jonathan Swift addressed social issues such as poverty, inequality, and political corruption in his writings.
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Jonathan Swift was known for his love of playing pranks, often incorporating humor and wit into his interactions with friends and colleagues.
Swift had a close relationship with Esther Johnson, who also went by the name "Stella." Their alleged "secret marriage" remains a matter of debate to this day.
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Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 – October 19, 1745) was an Anglo - Irish priest , essayist, political writer, and poet , considered the foremost satirist in the English language. Swift's fiercely ironic novels and essays, including world classics such as Gulliver's Travels and The Tale of the Tub , were immensely popular in his own time for their ribald humor and imaginative insight into human nature. Swift's object was to expose corruption and express political and social criticism through indirection.
- 1.1 Political Involvement
- 2.1 Major Prose
- 2.2.1 Synopsis
- 4.1 Essays, Tracts, Pamphlets, Periodicals
- 4.2 Prose Works
- 4.3 Sermons, Prayers
- 5 Biographical Sources
- 6 External links
In his own times, Swift aligned himself with the Tories and became the most prominent literary figure to lend his hand to Tory politics. As a result, Swift found himself in a bitter feud with the other great pamphleteer and essayist of his time, Joseph Addison . Moreover, Swift's royalist political leanings have made him a semi-controversial figure in his native Ireland , and whether Swift should be categorized as an English or Irish writer remains a point of academic contention. Nevertheless, Swift was, and remains, one of the most popular and readable authors of the eighteenth century, an author of humor and humanity, who is as often enlightening as he is ironical.
Swift was born at No. 7, Hoey's Court, Dublin, the second child and only son of Jonathan and Abigail Swift, English immigrants. Jonathan arrived seven months after his father's untimely death. Most of the facts of Swift's early life are obscure and sometimes contradictory. It is widely believed that his mother returned to England when Swift was still very young, leaving him to be raised by his father's family. His uncle Godwin took primary responsibility for the young Swift, sending him to Kilkenny Grammar School with one of his cousins.
In 1682 he attended Trinity College, Dublin, receiving his B.A. in 1686. Swift was studying for his master’s degree when political troubles in Ireland surrounding the Glorious Revolution forced him to leave for England in 1688, where his mother helped him get a position as secretary and personal assistant to Sir William Temple, an English diplomat. Temple arranged the Triple Alliance of 1668, retiring from public service to his country estate to tend his gardens and write his memoirs. Growing into the confidence of his employer, Swift was often trusted with matters of great importance. Within three years of their acquaintance, Temple had introduced his secretary to King William III , and sent him to London to urge the king to consent to a bill for triennial Parliaments.
Swift left Temple in 1690 for Ireland because of his health, but returned the following year. The illness—fits of vertigo or giddiness now widely believed to be Ménière's disease—would continue to plague Swift throughout his life. During this second stay with Temple, Swift received his M.A. from Oxford University in 1692. Then, apparently despairing of gaining a better position through Temple's patronage, Swift left Moor Park to be ordained a priest in the Church of Ireland, and was appointed to a small parish near Kilroot, Ireland, in 1694.
Swift was miserable in his new position, feeling isolated in a small, remote community. Swift left his post and returned to England and Temple's service at Moor Park in 1696 where he remained until Temple's death. There he was employed in helping prepare Temple's memoirs and correspondence for publication. During this time Swift wrote The Battle of the Books , a satire responding to critics of Temple's Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1690) that argued in favor of the classicism of the ancients over the modern "new learning" of scientific inquiry. Swift would not publish The Battle of the Books , however, for another fourteen years.
In the summer of 1699 Temple died. Swift stayed on briefly to finish editing Temple's memoirs, perhaps in the hope that recognition of his work might earn him a suitable position in England, but this proved ineffectual. His next move was to approach William III directly, based on his imagined connection through Temple and a belief that he had been promised a position. This failed so miserably that he accepted the lesser post of secretary and chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley, one of the Lords Justices of Ireland. However, when he reached Ireland he found that the secretaryship had been given to another. He soon obtained a post as chaplain of Laracor, Agher, and Rathbeggan in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. In Laracor, Swift ministered to a congregation of about 15 persons, and he had ample time to pursue his hobbies: gardening, architecture, and above all, writing.
In 1701 Swift had invited his friend Esther Johnson to Dublin. According to rumor Swift married her in 1716, although no marriage was ever acknowledged. Swift's friendship with Johnson, in any case, lasted through her lifetime, and his letters to Johnson from London between 1710 and 1713 make up his Journal to Stella , first published in 1768.
In February 1702, Swift received his doctor of divinity degree from Trinity College. During his visits to England in these years Swift published A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books (1704) and began to gain a reputation as a writer. This led to close, lifelong friendships with Alexander Pope , John Gay, and John Arbuthnot, forming the core of the Martinus Scriberlus Club, founded in 1713.
Political Involvement
Swift became increasingly active politically in these years. From 1707 to 1709 and again in 1710, Swift was in London, petitioning the Whig Party which he had supported all his life. He found the opposition Tory leadership more sympathetic to his cause and Swift was recruited to support their cause as editor of the Examiner , the principal Tory periodical, when they came to power in 1710. In 1711 Swift published the political pamphlet "The Conduct of the Allies," attacking the Whig government for its inability to end the prolonged war with France .
Swift was part of the inner circle of the Tory government, often acting as mediator between the prime minister and various other members of Parliament. Swift recorded his experiences and thoughts during this difficult time in a long series of letters, later collected and published as The Journal to Stella . With the death of Queen Anne and ascension of King George that year, the Whigs returned to power and the Tory leaders were tried for treason for conducting secret negotiations with France.
Before the fall of the Tory government, Swift hoped that his services would be rewarded with a church appointment in England. However, Queen Anne appears to have taken a dislike to Swift and thwarted these efforts. The best position his friends could secure for him was the deanery of St. Patrick's, Dublin. With the return of the Whigs, Swift's best move was to leave England, so he returned to Ireland in disappointment, a virtual exile, to live, he said, "like a rat in a hole."
Once in Ireland, however, Swift began to turn his pamphleteering skills in support of Irish causes, producing some of his most memorable works: "Proposal for Universal Use of Irish Manufacture" (1720), "The Drapier's Letters" (1724), and most famously, "A Modest Proposal" (1729), a biting parody of economic utilitarianism he associated with the Whigs. Swift's pamphlets on Irish issues made him into something of a national hero in Ireland, despite his close association with the Tories and his ethnic English background.
Also during these years, Swift began writing his masterpiece, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships , better known as Gulliver's Travels . In 1726 he paid a long-deferred visit to London, taking with him the manuscript of Gulliver's Travels . During his visit he stayed with his old friends, Alexander Pope , John Arbuthnot, and John Gay, who helped him arrange for the anonymous publication of his book. First published in November 1726, it was an immediate hit, with a total of three printings that year and another in early 1727. French, German, and Dutch translations appeared in 1727 and pirated copies were printed in Ireland.
Swift returned to England one more time in 1727, staying with Alexander Pope once again. In 1738 Swift began to show signs of illness and in 1742 he appears to have suffered a stroke, losing the ability to speak and realizing his worst fears of becoming mentally disabled ("I shall be like that tree," he once said, "I shall die at the top"). On October 19, 1745, Swift died. The bulk of his fortune was left to found a hospital for the mentally ill.
Swift was a prolific writer. 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.
Major Prose
In 1708, when a cobbler named John Partridge published a popular almanac of astrological predictions, Swift attacked Partridge in Prediction For The Ensuing Year , a parody predicting that Partridge would die on March 29. Swift followed up with a pamphlet issued on March 30 claiming that Partridge had in fact died, which was widely believed despite Partridge's statements to the contrary.
Swift's first major prose work, A Tale of a Tub , demonstrates many of the themes and stylistic techniques he would employ in his later work. It is at once wildly playful and humorous while at the same time pointed and harshly critical of its targets. The Tale recounts the exploits of three sons, representing the main threads of Christianity in England: the Anglican, Catholic, and Nonconformist ("Dissenting") Churches. Each of the sons receives a coat from their fathers as a bequest, with the added instructions to make no alternations to the coats whatsoever. However, the sons soon find that their coats have fallen out of current fashion and begin to look for loopholes in their father's will which will allow them to make the needed alterations. As each finds his own means of getting around their father's admonition, Swift satirizes the various changes (and corruptions) that had consumed all three branches of Christianity in Swift's time. Inserted into this story, in alternating chapters, Swift includes a series of whimsical "discourses" on various subjects.
In 1729, Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal,” supposedly written by an intelligent and objective "political arithmetician" who had carefully studied Ireland before making his proposal. The author calmly suggests one solution for both the problem of overpopulation and the growing numbers of undernourished people: breed those children who would otherwise go hungry or be mistreated and sell them as food for the rich.
Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver's Travels (published 1726, amended 1735), officially titled Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World is Swift's masterpiece, both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary sub-genre. It is easily Swift's most celebrated work and one of the indisputable classics of the English language.
The book became tremendously popular as soon as it was published (Alexander Pope quipped that "it is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery") and it is likely that it has never been out of print since its original publication. George Orwell went so far as to declare it to be among the six most indispensable books in world literature.
On his first voyage, Gulliver is washed ashore after a shipwreck, awaking to find himself a prisoner of a race of tiny people who stand 15 centimeters high, inhabitants of the neighboring and rival countries of Lilliput and Blefuscu. After giving assurances of his good behavior he is given a residence in Lilliput, becoming a favorite of the court. He assists the Lilliputians in subduing their neighbors, the Blefuscudans, but refuses to reduce Blefuscu to a province of Lilliput, so he is charged with treason and sentenced to be blinded. Fortunately, Gulliver easily overpowers the Lilliputian army and escapes back home.
On his second voyage, while exploring a new country, Gulliver is abandoned by his companions, finding himself in Brobdingnag, a land of giants. He is then bought (as a curiosity) by the queen of Brobdingnag and kept as a favorite at court. On a trip to the seaside, his ship is seized by a giant eagle and dropped into the sea where he is picked up by sailors and returned to England.
On his third voyage, Gulliver's ship is attacked by pirates and he is abandoned on a desolate rocky island. Fortunately he is rescued by the flying island of Laputa, a kingdom devoted to the intellectual arts that is utterly incapable of doing anything practical. While there, he tours the country as the guest of a low-ranking courtier and sees the ruin brought about by blind pursuit of science without practical results. He also encounters the Struldbrugs, an unfortunate race who are cursed to have immortal life without immortal youth. The trip is otherwise reasonably free of incident and Gulliver returns home, determined to stay a homebody for the rest of his days.
Disregarding these intentions at the end of the third part, Gulliver returns to sea where his crew promptly mutinies . He is abandoned ashore, coming first upon a race of hideously deformed creatures to which he conceives a violent antipathy. Shortly thereafter he meets an eloquent, talking horse and comes to understand that the horses (in their language "Houyhnhnm") are the rulers and the deformed creatures ("Yahoos") are in fact human beings . Gulliver becomes a member of the horse's household, treated almost as a favored pet, and comes to both admire and emulate the Houyhnhnms and their lifestyle, rejecting human beings as merely Yahoos endowed with some semblance of reason which they only use to exacerbate and add to the vices Nature gave them. However, an assembly of the Houyhnhnms rules that Gulliver, a Yahoo with some semblance of reason, is a danger to their civilization , so he is expelled. He is then rescued, against his will, by a Portuguese ship that returns him to his home in England. He is, however, unable to reconcile himself to living among Yahoos; he becomes a recluse, remaining in his house, largely avoiding his family, and spending several hours a day speaking with the horses in his stables.
Swift once stated that "satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own." Utilizing grotesque logic—for example, that Irish poverty can be solved by the breeding of infants as food for the rich—Swift commented on attitudes and policies of his day with an originality and forcefulness that influenced later novelists such as Mark Twain , H. G. Wells , and George Orwell . "Swiftian" satire is a term coined for especially outlandish and sardonic parody.
Although his many pamphlets and attacks on religious corruption and intellectual laziness are dated for most modern readers, Gulliver's Travels has remained a popular favorite both for its humorous rendering of human foibles and its adventurous fantasy.
Bibliography
All links retrieved June 11, 2007.
Essays, Tracts, Pamphlets, Periodicals
- "A Meditation upon a Broomstick" (1703-1710)
- "A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind" (1707-1711)
- The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers (1708-1709): Full text: Univ. of Adelaide
- "An Argument against Abolishing Christianity" (1708-1711): Full text: Univ. of Adelaide
- The Intelligencer (with Thomas Sheridan) (1710-????): Text: Project Gutenberg
- The Examiner (1710): Texts: Ourcivilisation.com , Project Gutenberg
- "A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue" (1712): Full texts: Jack Lynch , Univ. of Virginia
- "On the Conduct of the Allies" (1713)
- "Hints Toward an Essay on Conversation" (1713): Full text: Bartleby.com
- "A Letter to a Young Gentleman, Lately Entered into Holy Orders" (1720)
- "A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet" (1721): Full text: Bartleby.com
- The Drapier's Letters (1724, 1725): Full text: Project Gutenberg
- "Bon Mots de Stella" (1726): a curiously irrelevant appendix to "Gulliver's Travels"
- "An Essay on the Fates of Clergymen": Full text: JaffeBros
- "A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding": Full text: Bartleby.com
- "On the Death of Esther Johnson": Full text: Bartleby.com
- "An Essay On Modern Education": Full text: JaffeBros
Prose Works
- A Tale of a Tub 1696 (published 1704)
- The Battle of the Books 1697 (published 1704)
- "When I Come to Be Old" (1699)
- "A Letter Concerning the Sacramental Test" (1708)
- "Sentiments of a Church of England Man" (1708)
- "Bickerstaff/Partridge" papers (1708)
- ""Proposal for the Advancement of Religion" (1709)
- Examiner (1710 - )
- The Conduct of the Allies (1711)
- An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1711)
- Correcting the English Tongue (1712)
- Public Spirit of the Whigs (1714)
- A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet (1720)
- The Drapier's Letters to the People of Ireland Against Receiving Wood's Halfpence (1724)
- Gulliver's Travels (1726)
- A Modest Proposal (1729)
- A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation (1738)
Sermons, Prayers
- Three Sermons and Three Prayers. Full text: Project Gutenberg
- Three Sermons: I. on mutual subjection. II. on conscience. III. on the trinity. Text: Project Gutenberg
- Writings on Religion and the Church. Text at Project Gutenberg: Volume One , Volume Two
- "The First He Wrote Oct. 17, 1727." Full text: Worldwideschool.org
- "The Second Prayer Was Written Nov. 6, 1727." Full text: Worldwideschool.org
Biographical Sources
- Samuel Johnson's “Life of Swift”: JaffeBros – From his Lives of the Poets .
- William Makepeace Thackeray's influential vitriolic biography: JaffeBros – From his English Humourists of The Eighteenth Century .
- Many other sources are listed here.
External links
All links retrieved August 3, 2022.
- Online Books by Jonathan Swift The Online Books Page
- Works by Jonathan Swift . Project Gutenberg
- A Modest Proposal Free audiobook from LibriVox
New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards . This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:
- Jonathan_Swift history
- Gulliver's_Travels history
The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia :
- History of "Jonathan Swift"
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By James McNamara
- Feb. 20, 2017
JONATHAN SWIFT The Reluctant Rebel By John Stubbs Illustrated. 739 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $39.95.
Satire plays an important role in a healthy democracy and a vital role in an endangered one. It’s timely, then, to have “Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel,” John Stubbs’s new biography of the finest satirist in the English language. That the name of the author of “Gulliver’s Travels” persists in popular vernacular — with “Swiftian” defining caustic and accomplished wit — speaks to his lasting influence. But if Swift’s satire deserves contemporary study, so does the man himself, a figure of contradiction and intellectual courage, unafraid to savage Enlightenment England and Ireland’s greatest powers.
Born in Ireland between the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution, Swift spent his early years in England, raised by a nurse who may well have kidnapped him. After a lackluster undergraduate career, he became private secretary to the influential diplomat and writer Sir William Temple. Later, Swift was ordained, but his political writing drew the attention of Robert Harley, the Tory prime minister of England, who made Swift his chief polemicist — an 18th-century Toby Ziegler. This was a life on the knife’s edge of power, where his writing helped destroy the powerful Duke of Marlborough and led to threats: He once defused a mail bomb sent to Harley before it killed them both.
After the Tories fell, Swift returned to Ireland as dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Although he never returned to front-line English politics, his satire was influential there and in Ireland. “Gulliver’s Travels,” “A Modest Proposal” and “The Drapier’s Letters” — credited with saving Ireland by defeating unfair English currency policies — made him a hero in his homeland. Stubbs (the author of a life of John Donne) reports that when England’s new prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, proposed arresting Swift for mauling him in verse, a friend “asked him coolly ‘whether he had 10,000 men to spare’ — for that was the size of the army the government would need to take Swift from his loyal Dubliners.”
In this excellent literary biography, Stubbs draws on extensive research to contextualize Swift’s courtier’s life within the hurly-burly of 18th-century foreign and domestic politics, also inspecting Swift’s clerical life within the doctrinal struggles of the church. He studies Swift’s literary motivations and professional contradictions: a man who disavowed political parties but became a Tory operative; a fastidious, conservative priest who became “king of the mob,” rebelling against the established order with satire that delved into the stink of daily life.
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Poems & Poets
Jonathan Swift
Anglo-Irish poet, satirist, essayist, and political pamphleteer Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland. He spent much of his early adult life in England before returning to Dublin to serve as Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin for the last 30 years of his life. It was this later stage when he would write most of his greatest works. Best known as the author of A Modest Proposal (1729), Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and A Tale Of A Tub (1704), Swift is widely acknowledged as the greatest prose satirist in the history of English literature.
Swift’s father died months before Jonathan was born, and his mother returned to England shortly after giving birth, leaving Jonathan in the care of his uncle in Dublin. Swift’s extended family had several interesting literary connections: his grandmother, Elizabeth (Dryden) Swift, was the niece of Sir Erasmus Dryden, grandfather of the poet John Dryden. The same grandmother’s aunt, Katherine (Throckmorton) Dryden, was a first cousin of Elizabeth, wife of Sir Walter Raleigh. His great-great grandmother, Margaret (Godwin) Swift, was the sister of Francis Godwin, author of The Man in the Moone , which influenced parts of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels . His uncle, Thomas Swift, married a daughter of the poet and playwright Sir William Davenant, a godson of William Shakespeare . Swift’s uncle served as Jonathan’s benefactor, sending him to Trinity College Dublin, where he earned his BA and befriended writer William Congreve. Swift also studied toward his MA before the Glorious Revolution of 1688 forced Jonathan to move to England, where he would work as a secretary to a diplomat. He would earn an MA from Hart Hall, Oxford University, in 1692, and eventually a Doctor in Divinity degree from Trinity College Dublin in 1702.
Swift’s poetry has a relationship either by interconnections with, or by reactions against, the poetry of his contemporaries and predecessors. He was probably influenced, in particular, by the Restoration writers John Wilmot , Earl of Rochester and Samuel Butler (who shared Swift’s penchant for octosyllabic verse). He may have picked up pointers from the Renaissance poets John Donne and Sir Philip Sidney . Beside these minor borrowings of his contemporaries, his debts are almost negligible. In the Augustan Age, an era which did not necessarily value originality above other virtues, his poetic contribution was strikingly original.
In reading Swift’s poems, one is first impressed with their apparent spareness of allusion and poetic device. Anyone can tell that a particular poem is powerful or tender or vital or fierce, but literary criticism seems inadequate to explain why. A few recent critics have carefully studied his use of allusion and image, but with only partial success. It still seems justified to conclude that Swift’s straightforward poetic style seldom calls for close analysis, his allusions seldom bring a whole literary past back to life, and his images are not very interesting in themselves. In general, Swift’s verses read faster than John Dryden ’s or Alexander Pope ’s, with much less ornamentation and masked wit. He apparently intends to sweep the reader along by the logic of the argument to the several conclusions he puts forth. He seems to expect that the reader will appreciate the implications of the argument as a whole, after one full and rapid reading. For Swift’s readers, the couplet will not revolve slowly upon itself, exhibiting intricate patterns and fixing complex relationships between fictive worlds and contemporary life.
The poems are not always as spare in reality as Swift would have his readers believe, but he seems deliberately to induce in them an unwillingness to look closely at the poems for evidence of technical expertise. He does this in part by working rather obviously against some poetic conventions, in part by saying openly that he rejects poetic cant, and in part by presenting himself—in many of his poems—as a perfectly straightforward man, incapable of a poet’s deviousness. By these strategies, he directs attention away from his handling of imagery and meter, even in those instances where he has been technically ingenious. For the most part, however, the impression of spareness is quite correct; and if judged by the sole criterion of technical density, then he would have to be judged an insignificant poet. But technical density is a poetic virtue only as it simulates and accompanies subtlety of thought. One could argue that Swift’s poems create a density of another kind: that “The Day of Judgement,” for example, initiates a subtle process of thought that takes place after, rather than during, the reading of the poem, at a time when the mind is more or less detached from the printed page. One could argue as well that Swift makes up in power what he lacks in density: that the strength of the impression created by his directness gives an impetus to prolonged meditation of a very high quality. On these grounds, valuing Swift for what he really is and does, one must judge him a major figure in poetry as well as prose.
Swift suffered a stroke in 1742, leaving him unable to speak. He died three years later, and was buried at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.
- Ireland & Northern Ireland
Study Guide
Analysis pages.
- Character Analysis
- Foreshadowing
- Historical Context
- Literary Devices
- Quote Analysis
- Rhetorical Devices
Jonathan Swift Biography
Jonathan Swift, with perhaps the keenest mind and sharpest wit in an age marked by intellectual brilliance, was a mass of contradictions. He was dedicated to the ideals of rationality and common sense, yet he approached the irrational in his contempt for humankind’s failure to live up to his ideal. Profoundly distrustful of all “enthusiasm” or fanaticism, he was himself something of an enthusiast in his glorification of “pure reason.” He was possessed of one of the clearest and most direct styles in the English language, but the subtleties of his irony were misunderstood in his own and later ages.
Although biographical details do not adequately explain either the genius or the contradictions of Swift, the combination of extreme pride and a position of dependence on the favors of the rich or powerful throws light on the persistent dissatisfaction with life that colors almost all his work. Born in Dublin on November 30, 1667, the son of an impecunious Englishman who had settled in Ireland, Swift was educated at Trinity College with the aid of a wealthy uncle. In 1688 he left Ireland and became secretary to Sir William Temple at Moor Park, Surrey. Temple was not a congenial master, and Swift chafed to be independent in the more exciting world of London. It was the cultured Sir William, however, who gave polish to the somewhat uncouth young man and introduced him to his own world of wit and polite learning, and it was on his behalf that Swift entered the controversy over the relative merits of the “ancients” and the “moderns” in The Battle of the Books . In this brilliant example of neoclassical mock-heroic prose, Swift pours out his contempt for the self-righteous complacency of modern criticism and poetry. In this battle between the “ancients” and “moderns,” books by classical and modern authors war with one another. Swift attacks the hubris of moderns such as John Dryden. It was also at Moor Park that Swift first met Esther Johnson, possibly Temple’s illegitimate daughter, the “Stella” of his later life.
During this same period, Swift wrote A Tale of a Tub , a burlesque history of the Church in which his genius first revealed itself in its full force. Just as important as his tale of the degradation of the Church through selfishness and fanaticism are the numerous digressions on moral, philosophical, and literary subjects.
In 1694, dissatisfied with Moor Park, Swift returned to Ireland, where he was ordained an Anglican priest, but after a dreary year in an Irish parish he returned to England. Between 1708 and 1714 he lived in London, and during that period he achieved his greatest triumphs—social, literary, and political. He quickly became familiar with the literary lights of the age, including Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, and John Gay. He wrote pieces for Steele’s Tatler and entered Church controversies with such essays as the brilliantly ironic An Argument to Prove That the Abolishing of Christianity in England, May, as Things Now Stand, Be Attended with Some Inconveniences, and Perhaps Not Produce Those Many Good Effects Proposed Thereby .
In 1710, partly from hopes of personal advancement and partly through a passionate interest in defending the prerogatives of the Church, Swift switched his allegiance from the Whig to the Tory Party. This move won for him the enmity of Whigs such as Addison and Steele but gained him even more powerful friends in Robert Harley and Henry St. John, leaders of the new Tory ministry. Swift’s political writing, in the Tory Examiner (which he edited briefly, 1710-1711) and in pamphlets attacking Robert Walpole and the duke of Marlborough, proved a powerful aid to the Tory administration in its attempts to discredit the Whig “war party.” For his untiring labors, Swift hoped, and expected, to be rewarded with ecclesiastical preferment, perhaps a bishopric, but the memories of those who have risen to high places are notoriously short. Finally, in 1713,...
(The entire page is 1,203 words.)
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Author : Jonathan Swift
- 1.1 Major Works
- 1.2 Collections
- 2 Works about Swift
- 3 Works about Swift's works
- Journal to Stella
- Journal Articles
- Political Works
- Satires and Puns
- Sermons and Religious Essays
- Other Prose
- Attributed to Swift
Major Works
- The Battle of the Books (1704)
- A Modest Proposal (1729)
- A Tale of a Tub (1704)
- Verses on His Own Death (1731)
- Letter to the 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer on the death of his daughter (1713)
Collections
- The Battle of the Books and Other Short Pieces (1886)
- Three Sermons and Three Prayers (1744)
- The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift (19 volumes) (1801)
Works about Swift
- The Life of Dr. Swift , by Thomas Sheridan (1784)
- "Jonathan Swift" in The lives of the most eminent English poets: with critical observations on their works (1783), by Samuel Johnson , Volume 3, pp.336-402.
- " Swift ", in The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century (1853), by William Makepeace Thackeray
- The Character of Dr. Swift After His Death
- " Mark Explains Dean Swift " in Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field (1922), by Henry William Fischer
- Jonathan Swift : the Leslie Stephen Lecture delivered before the University of Cambridge on 26 May 1917 by Charles Whibley
- " Swift, Jonathan ," in Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900 , London: Smith, Elder, & Co. (1885–1900) in 63 vols.
- " Swift, Jonathan ," in A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature , by John William Cousin , London: J. M. Dent & Sons (1910)
- " Swift, Jonathan ," in Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed., 1911)
Works about Swift's works
- “ Tale of a Tub, A, and The Battle of the Books ”, in The Encyclopedia Americana , New York, 1920
Some or all works by this author were published before January 1, 1929, and are in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. Translations or editions published later may be copyrighted. Posthumous works may be copyrighted based on how long they have been published in certain countries and areas.
Public domain Public domain false false
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Five Fascinating Facts about Jonathan Swift
The life of Jonathan Swift told through five pieces of interesting trivia
1. Jonathan Swift invented the girls’ name Vanessa. The name Vanessa originated as Swift’s pet name for his friend and lover Esther Vanhomrigh (c. 1688-1723), who was over 20 years his junior. Swift wrote a poem, Cadenus and Vanessa (1713), about Esther/Vanessa.
2. He was a cousin of John Dryden. Dryden reportedly remarked to his distant cousin, ‘Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet.’ Sure enough, it would be in prose – with such works as ‘A Modest Proposal’, A Tale of a Tub , and Gulliver’s Travels – that Swift would create his enduring legacy.
4. His novel Gulliver’s Travels was a huge bestseller in its day. Swift’s most famous book, its full title was Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships. It was published anonymously in October 1726 and was a resounding hit right from the start. The book proved something of an instant bestseller: 10,000 copies were sold in the first three weeks.
5. He may have been the author of a 1722 essay called ‘The Benefit of Farting Explain’d’. He may also have been the author of a treatise on human excrement under the pen name ‘Dr Shit’. In truth, both pamphlets have been attributed to Swift but whether he was definitely the author of them remains unknown.
Image: Bust of Jonathan Swift at St Patrick’s Cathedral, photo by Andreas F. Borchert, Wikimedia Commons .
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4 thoughts on “Five Fascinating Facts about Jonathan Swift”
I want to read Battle of the Books, it sounds like an interesting essay.
Reblogged this on nativemericangirl's Blog .
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A comprehensive biography of Jonathan Swift, an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, and cleric. Learn about his life, works, influences, and legacy in the English language and literature.
Name: Jonathan Swift. Birth Year: 1667. Birth date: November 30, 1667. Birth City: Dublin. Birth Country: Ireland. Gender: Male. Best Known For: Jonathan Swift was an Irish author and satirist ...
Jonathan Swift (born November 30, 1667, Dublin, Ireland—died October 19, 1745, Dublin) was an Anglo-Irish author, who was the foremost prose satirist in the English language.Besides the celebrated novel Gulliver's Travels (1726), he wrote such shorter works as A Tale of a Tub (1704) and "A Modest Proposal" (1729).. Early life and education. Swift's father, Jonathan Swift the elder ...
Jonathan Swift Biography. Jonathan Swift was born into a poor family that included his mother (Abigail) and his sister (Jane). His father, a noted clergyman in England, had died seven months before Jonathan's birth. There is not much known of Swift's childhood, and what is reported is not always agreed upon by biographers.
Learn about the life and works of Jonathan Swift, the Irish author and satirist who wrote Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal. Find out his biography, major works, and political views in this article summary.
SWIFT, JONATHAN (1667 - 1745). SWIFT, JONATHAN (1667 - 1745), English satirist, poet, and clergyman. Swift was born in Dublin to English parents, Jonathan and Abigale Erick (or Herrick) Swift. His father had died before Swift's birth, and he was raised by his father's family from the age of three when his mother returned to Leicestershire in England.He attended Kilkenny Grammar School ...
Jonathan Swift was born on 30 th November in 1667, in Dublin, Ireland. He was a son of Jonathan Swift Sr., an attorney, while his mother, Abigail Erick, was a homemaker. Unfortunately, his father died two months before his birth. Without a steady income, Abigail struggled hard for the survival of her family.
Learn about the life and works of Jonathan Swift, the world's most misunderstood children's writer and a master of prose satire. Explore his political, religious, and literary battles, his illness, his ward, and his legacy.
Learn about Jonathan Swift, an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, poet and cleric. He wrote famous works like Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal and A Tale of a Tub.
Summary. This chapter provides a biographical overview of Swift's career. It reconstructs the contexts of Swift's early life and career in Ireland and England and charts his friendships and allegiances. Swift's public life was driven, as this chapter shows, by a 'scribbling itch' reflected in his twenty-eight crossings of the Irish Sea.
Jonathan Swift: Biography. Jonathan Swift, by Charles Jervas, 1710. Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 - 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who becameDean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.
Irish Men. Childhood & Early Years. Jonathan Swift was born on 30 November 1667 in Dublin, Ireland. His father, also named Jonathon Swift, was originally from Goodrich, Herefordshire, and his mother, Abigail Erick, was from Frisby on the Wreake, a village in Leicestershire. He had an elder sister named Jane.
Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 - October 19, 1745) ... Biography. Swift was born at No. 7, Hoey's Court, Dublin, the second child and only son of Jonathan and Abigail Swift, English immigrants. Jonathan arrived seven months after his father's untimely death. Most of the facts of Swift's early life are obscure and sometimes contradictory.
David Cody. , Associate Professor of English, Hartwick College. Jonathan Swift was born on November 30, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland, the son of Protestant Anglo-Irish parents: his ancestors had been Royalists, and all his life he would be a High-Churchman. His father, also Jonathan, died a few months before he was born, upon which his mother ...
Feb. 20, 2017. JONATHAN SWIFT. The Reluctant Rebel. By John Stubbs. Illustrated. 739 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $39.95. Satire plays an important role in a healthy democracy and a vital role in an ...
16.1: Jonathan Swift- Biography. Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 - 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who becameDean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. Swift is remembered for works such as Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A ...
Swift's father died months before Jonathan was born, and his mother returned to England shortly after giving birth, leaving Jonathan in the care of his uncle in Dublin. Swift's extended family had several interesting literary connections: his grandmother, Elizabeth (Dryden) Swift, was the niece of Sir Erasmus Dryden, grandfather of the poet ...
Jonathan Swift Biography for Gulliver's Travels: Jonathan Swift, with perhaps the keenest mind and sharpest wit in an age marked by intellectual brilliance, was a mass of contradictions. He was dedicated to the ideals of rationality and common sense, yet he approached the irrational in his contempt for humankind's failure to live up to his ...
Summary. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) has proven a perennial but elusive subject of literary biography. In the absence of conclusive evidence, questions about his relationships, his health, and his political views all remain open to interpretation, as does their impact on his work. In parallel to an extensive body of literary biography, but ...
"Mark Explains Dean Swift" in Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field (1922), by Henry William Fischer; Jonathan Swift: the Leslie Stephen Lecture delivered before the University of Cambridge on 26 May 1917 by Charles Whibley "Swift, Jonathan," in Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, London: Smith, Elder, & Co. (1885-1900) in 63 vols.
Biography of Jonathan Swift. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Irish cleric, political pamphleteer, satirist, and author wrote Gulliver's Travels (1726); I grew weary of the sea, and intended to stay at home with my wife and family. I removed from the Old Jewry to Fetter Lane, and from thence to Wapping, hoping to get business among the sailors; but ...
The life of Jonathan Swift told through five pieces of interesting trivia. 1. Jonathan Swift invented the girls' name Vanessa. The name Vanessa originated as Swift's pet name for his friend and lover Esther Vanhomrigh (c. 1688-1723), who was over 20 years his junior. Swift wrote a poem, Cadenus and Vanessa (1713), about Esther/Vanessa.
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 - 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift".. Swift is remembered for works such as A Tale of a Tub (1704), An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity ...
Swift's silver mine is an alleged silver mine whose existence is part of the folklore of the Appalachian Mountains.The mine was supposedly discovered in 1760 by an Englishman named Jonathan Swift. [1] The uncertainty of its location is part of the folklore of its existence, with locations ascribed to eastern Kentucky, southwest Virginia or eastern Tennessee.