Jonathan Swift(1667——1745)was an Anglo-Irish satirist,essayiSt,political pamphleteer(first for Whigs then for the Tories),poet and cleric who became Dean of St.Patrick’s,Dublin.He is remembered for works such as Glliver s Travels,A Modest Proposal,A yournal to Stella,Drapkr sLetters,The Battle ofthe Books,An Argument Against AbolishingChristianity,andA Tak ofa Tub.Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language,and is lesswell known for his poetry.
Swift originally published all of his works under pseudonyms-such as Lemuel Gulliver,Isaac Bickerstaff,M.B.Drapier—or anonymously He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire:the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
Gulliver's Travels was published in 1726; and, although it was by nomeans intended for them, the book was soon appropriated by thechildren, who have ever since continued to regard it as one of themost delightful of their story books. They cannot comprehend theoccasion which provoked the book nor appreciate the satire whichunderlies the narrative, but they delight in the wonderful adventures,and wander full of open-eyed astonishment into the new worldsthrough which the vivid and logically accurate imagination of theauthor so personally conducts them. And therer is ameaning and amoral in the stories of the Voyages to Lilliputand Brobdingnag which is entirely apart fromthe political satire they are intended to convey a meaning and a moral which the youngest childwho can read it will not fail to seize, and upon which it is scarcely necessary for the teacher to comment. Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), is a novelby Jonathan Swift that is both a satire onhuman nature and a parody of the “travellers'tales” literary sub-genre. It is Swift's bestknown full-length work, and a classic ofEnglish literature, The book became tremendously popular assoon as it was published. (ohn Gay said in a1726 letter to Swift that “it is universally read,from the cabinet council to the nursery”); sincethen, it has never been out of print.