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    Who Was Jonathan Swift

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    Azim Abdiev
    Jonathan Swift was an Irish author, clergyman and satirist born in 1667 in Dublin, Ireland. He received his bachelor's degree from Trinity College before working as an assistant to an English statesman. His most famous work, Gulliver's Travels, was published anonymously in 1726 and became an immediate success. Throughout his life, Swift maintained a close relationship with Esther Johnson, whom he met as a child, though the nature of their relationship is ambiguous. He suffered a stroke in 1742 and died in 1745 in Dublin.

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    Who Was Jonathan Swift

    Uploaded by

    Azim Abdiev
    69 views2 pages
    Jonathan Swift was an Irish author, clergyman and satirist born in 1667 in Dublin, Ireland. He received his bachelor's degree from Trinity College before working as an assistant to an English statesman. His most famous work, Gulliver's Travels, was published anonymously in 1726 and became an immediate success. Throughout his life, Swift maintained a close relationship with Esther Johnson, whom he met as a child, though the nature of their relationship is ambiguous. He suffered a stroke in 1742 and died in 1745 in Dublin.

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    Jonathan Swift was an Irish author, clergyman and satirist born in 1667 in Dublin, Ireland. He received his bachelor's degree from Trinity College before working as an assistant to an English statesman. His most famous work, Gulliver's Travels, was published anonymously in 1726 and became an immediate success. Throughout his life, Swift maintained a close relationship with Esther Johnson, whom he met as a child, though the nature of their relationship is ambiguous. He suffered a stroke in 1742 and died in 1745 in Dublin.

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    69 views2 pages

    Who Was Jonathan Swift

    Uploaded by

    Azim Abdiev
    Jonathan Swift was an Irish author, clergyman and satirist born in 1667 in Dublin, Ireland. He received his bachelor's degree from Trinity College before working as an assistant to an English statesman. His most famous work, Gulliver's Travels, was published anonymously in 1726 and became an immediate success. Throughout his life, Swift maintained a close relationship with Esther Johnson, whom he met as a child, though the nature of their relationship is ambiguous. He suffered a stroke in 1742 and died in 1745 in Dublin.

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    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. Most of
    his writings were published under pseudonyms. He best remembered for his 1726 book Gulliver's
    Travels.

    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.

    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.

    He also returned to writing. His first political pamphlet was titled A Discourse on the Contests and
    Dissentions in Athens and Rome.

    'Gulliver's Travels' and Later Years

    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.

    Death

    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

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