Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was  a writer, essayist, satirist, and Anglican cleric born on 30 November 1667 in Dublin to English parents. His father died of syphilis 7 months before he was born and he was primarily raised by is uncle Godwin Swift.  He left school at 15 before retuning to education and He was educated at Trinity College and Oxford University. After working for a time as secretary to Sir William Temple in England, Swift was ordained as a priest of the Church of Ireland and returned to Dublin in 1694. In 1713 he became Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The first of his major satirical works, A Tale of a Tub, was published in 1704 and through his writing he became friends with the poet Alexander Pope. Together with other writers, they founded a literary group called the Martinus Scriblerus Club in 1714. Gulliver’s Travels (1726) is the only book for which he received any money and he never wrote under his own name. 

He died on 19 October 1745 and is buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.