Jonathan Swift

About the Author

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs, then for Tories), and poet, famous for works like Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal, The 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, and is less well 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: Horatian and Juvenalian.