Jonathan Swift |
| Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667
– October 19, 1745) was an Irish cleric, satirist,
essayist, political pamphleteer, and poet, famous for
works like Gulliver's Travels, A Modest
Proposal, A Journal to Stella, The Drapier's
Letters, The Battle of the Books, and A
Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose
satirist in the English language, although he is less
well known for his poetry. Swift published all of his
works under pseudonyms — such as Lemuel Gulliver,
Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier — or anonymously. Jonathan Swift was born at No. 8, Hoey's Court, Dublin, and was the second child and only son of Jonathan and Abigail Erick (or Herrick) Swift, who were English immigrants. Jonathan arrived seven months after his father's untimely death. Most of the facts of Swift's early life are obscure, confused and sometimes contradictory. It is widely believed that his mother returned to England when Jonathan was still very young, leaving him to be raised by his father's family. His uncle Godwin took primary responsibility for the young Jonathan, sending him to Kilkenny Grammar School with one of his cousins. |
Epitaph
Swift wrote his own epitaph:
which William Butler Yeats translated from the Latin as:
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