Jonathan Swift

Born in Dublin in 1667, Jonathan Swift became one of the great satirists in English literature. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin and later spent time in the household of Sir William Temple at Moor Park, where he developed as a writer and entered the political and literary world.

Swift wrote across many forms—poems, pamphlets, sermons, essays, and prose fiction—but he is most famous for Gulliver’s Travels and for the fierce satirical essay A Modest Proposal. His writing is witty and inventive on the surface, yet deeply serious underneath, using irony and exaggeration to expose cruelty, hypocrisy, and bad government.

He was also a clergyman in the Church of Ireland and served as Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin for many years. That public role, along with his involvement in Irish political causes, helped make him not just a literary figure but a major voice in the life of his time. He died in Dublin in 1745.