Irish cleric, 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 like Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, 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; the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.

Jonathan Swift was born on 30 November 1667 at No. 7, Hoey's Court, Dublin, and was the second child and only son of Jonathan Swift (a second cousin of John Dryden) and wife Abigail Erick (or Herrick). His father was Irish born and his mother was born in England. Swift arrived seven months after his father's untimely death.

Young Jonathan was a sickly child, and it is said he later developed Meniere's Disease, which affects the inner ear and causes dizziness, vertigo, nausea, and hearing loss. After his father died, Jonathan's mother was left without an income and she and his nurse did their best to provide care for him. But his mother was extremely poor and it is widely believed that she returned to England when Jonathan was still very young, then leaving him to be raised by his father's family. His uncle Godwin took primary responsibility for the young Jonathan.

His uncle sent Jonathan to the Kilkenny Grammar School from 1674 to 1682 where he met friend and future playwright and poet William Congreve (1670-1729). At school Swift was not a very good good student and his teachers noted his headstrong behavior. At the age of fourteen, in 1682 Swift entered Trinity College in Dublin, earning a B.A. four years later. He wanted to continue to earn an M.A. but political unrest surrounding the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the loss of financial support from his Uncle caused him to travel to England to stay with his mother in Leicester.

She helped him get a position as secretary and personal assistant of Sir William Temple at Moor Park, Farnham. Temple was an English diplomat who, having arranged the Triple Alliance of 1668, retired from public service to his country estate to tend his gardens and write his memoirs. Growing into confidence with his employer, Swift "was often trusted with matters of great importance." Within three years of their acquaintance, Temple had introduced his secretary to William III, and sent him to London to urge the King to consent to a bill for triennial Parliaments.

When Swift took up his residence at Moor Park, he met Esther Johnson, then 8 years old, the fatherless daughter of one of the household servants. Swift acted as her tutor and mentor, giving her the nickname "Stella" and the two maintained a close, but ambiguous relationship for the rest of Esther's life.

Swift left Temple in 1690 for Ireland because of his health, but returned to Moor Park the following year. During this second stay with Temple, Swift received his M.A. from Hertford College, Oxford University in 1692. Then, apparently despairing of gaining a better position through Temple's patronage, Swift left Moor Park to become an ordained priest in the Established Church of Ireland and in 1694 he was appointed to the prebend of Kilroot in the Diocese of Connor, with his parish located at Kilroot, near Carrickfergus in County Antrim.

Swift appears to have been miserable in his new position, being isolated in a small, remote community far from the centres of power and influence. While at Kilroot, however, Swift may well have become romantically involved with Jane Waring. A letter from him survives, offering to remain if she would marry him and promising to leave and never return to Ireland if she refused. She presumably refused, because Swift left his post and returned to England and Temple's service at Moor Park in 1696, and he remained there until Temple's death. There he was employed in helping to prepare Temple's memoirs and correspondence for publication. During this time Swift wrote The Battle of the Books, a satire responding to critics of Temple's Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1690), exploring the merits of the ancients and the moderns in literature. The author himself pretends to be an objective chronicler of events, but his sympathies are more on the side of the ancients. The book was however not published until 1704.

On January 27 1699 Temple died. Swift stayed on briefly in England to complete the editing of Temple's memoirs, and perhaps in the hope that recognition of his work might earn him a suitable position in England. However, Swift's work made enemies of some of Temple's family and friends who objected to indiscretions included in the memoirs. His next move was to approach King William directly, based on his imagined connection through Temple and a belief that he had been promised a position. This failed so miserably that he accepted the lesser post of secretary and chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley, one of the Lords Justices of Ireland. However, when he reached Ireland he found that the secretaryship had already been given to another. In 1700 he was instituted as Vicar to Laracor, Agher, and Rathbeggan just outside Dublin. In 1701 he was awarded Doctor of Divinity from Trinity College, Dublin and published, anonymously, a political pamphlet, A Discourse on the Contests and Dissentions in Athens and Rome.

On the spring of 1702 he traveled to England and returned to Ireland in October, accompanied by Esther Johnson — now twenty years old — and his friend Rebecca Dingley, another member of William Temple's household. There is a great mystery and controversy over Swift's relationship with Esther Johnson nicknamed "Stella". Many hold that they were secretly married in 1716. Although there has never been definite proof of this, there is no doubt that she was dearer to him than anyone else and that his feelings for her did not change throughout his life.

In 1704 his satirical look at religion A Tale of a Tub was published. Busy with clerical duties, Swift was also immersed in Dublin society and politics. Becoming an outspoken critic, and with the intent of improving things in Ireland, he often travelled to London, England.

In 1710 Swift tried to open a political career among Whigs but changed his party and took over the Tory journal The Examiner. He joined the Tories and his first of many political pamphlets appeared including The Conduct of the Allies (1711) and The Public Spirit of the Whigs (1714). In The Conduct of the Allies, he attacked the Whig government for its inability to end the prolonged war with France. The incoming Tory government conducted secret (and illegal) negotiations with France, resulting in the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) ending the War of the Spanish Succession.

Swift was part of the inner circle of the Tory government, and often acted as mediator between Henry St. John (Viscount Bolingbroke) the secretary of state for foreign affairs (1710–15) and Robert Harley (Earl of Oxford) lord treasurer and prime minister (1711–1714). Swift recorded his experiences and thoughts during this difficult time in a long series of letters to Esther Johnson, later collected and published as A Journal to Stella. The animosity between the two Tory leaders eventually led to the dismissal of Harley in 1714. With the death of Queen Anne and ascension of George I that year, the Whigs returned to power and the Tory leaders were tried for treason for conducting secret negotiations with France.

Also during these years in London, Swift became acquainted with the Vanhomrigh family and became involved with one of the daughters, Esther, yet another fatherless young woman and an ambiguous relationship to confuse Swift's biographers. Swift furnished Esther with the nickname "Vanessa" and she features as one of the main characters in his poem Cadenus and Vanessa. The poem and their correspondence suggests that Esther was infatuated with Swift, that he may have reciprocated her affections, only to regret it and then try to break it off. Esther followed Swift to Ireland in 1714, where there appears to have been a confrontation, possibly involving Esther Johnson. Esther Vanhomrigh died in 1723 at the age of 35.

Before the fall of the Tory government, Swift hoped that his services would be rewarded with a church appointment in England. However, Queen Anne appeared to have taken a dislike to Swift and thwarted these efforts. The best position his friends could secure for him was the Deanery of St. Patrick's, Dublin. With the return of the Whigs, Swift's best move was to leave England and he returned to Ireland in disappointment, a virtual exile, to live "like a rat in a hole".

Once in Ireland, however, Swift began to turn his pamphleteering skills in support of Irish causes, producing some of his most memorable works: Proposal for the universal use of Irish Manufacture (1720), Drapier's Letters (1724), in protest over bribery, corruption, deceit, and unfair treatment of the Irish on the part of the English government granting a patent to mint an inferior copper coin to William Wood, and A Modest Proposal (1729), where the narrator recommends with grotesque logic, that Irish poverty can be solved by the breeding up their infants as food for the rich, earning him the status of an Irish patriot.

Also during these years, he began writing his masterpiece, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships, better known as Gulliver's Travels. Much of the material reflects his political experiences of the preceding decade. For instance, the episode when the giant Gulliver puts out the Lilliputian palace fire by urinating on it can be seen as a metaphor for the Tories' illegal peace treaty; having done a good thing in an unfortunate manner. In 1726 he paid a long-deferred visit to London, taking with him the manuscript of Gulliver's Travels. First published in November 1726, it was an immediate hit, with a total of three printings that year and another in early 1727. French, German, and Dutch translations appeared in 1727 and pirated copies were printed in Ireland.

Swift also wrote on many ecclesiastical matters including his Three Sermons and Prayers (1744); many more are contained in his Writings on Religion and the Church (1898) which includes An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, about the preservation of the Christian religion as a social necessity. The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers (1708) a satire of almanacs and astrology was "Written to prevent the people of England from being farther imposed on by vulgar almanack-makers. By Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq."

Swift returned to England one more time in 1727. The visit was cut short when he received word that Esther Johnson was dying and Swift rushed back home to be with her. On January 28, 1728, Esther Johnson died, though he prayed at her bedside, even composing prayers for her comfort. Swift could not bear to be present at the end, but on the night of her death he began to write his The Death of Mrs. Johnson. He was too ill to attend the funeral at St. Patrick's. Many years later, a lock of hair, assumed to be Esther Johnson's, was found in his desk, wrapped in a paper bearing the words, "Only a woman's hair."

Death became a frequent feature in Swift's life from this point. In 1731 he wrote Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, his own obituary published in 1739. In 1732, his good friend and collaborator John Gay died. In 1735, John Arbuthnot, another friend from his days in London, died. In 1738 Swift began to show signs of illness and in 1742 he appears to have suffered a stroke, losing the ability to speak and realizing his worst fears of becoming mentally disabled.

It is thought that Swift suffered from Ménière's disease or Alzheimer's disease. Many considered him insane - however, from the beginning of his twentieth year he had suffered from deafness. Swift had predicted his mental decay when he was about 50 and had remarked to the poet Edward Young when they were gazing at the withered crown of a tree: "I shall be like that tree, I shall die from the top."

On October 19, 1745, Swift died in Dublin. He left behind a great mass of poetry and prose, chiefly in the form of pamphlets. Swift was buried by Esther Johnson's side, in accordance with his wishes. The bulk of his fortune was left to found a hospital for the mentally ill, originally known as St. Patrick’s Hospital for Imbeciles, which opened in 1757, and which still exists as a psychiatric hospital.

Jonathan Swift wrote his own epitaph:

Hic depositum est corpus
JONATHAN SWIFT S.T.D.
Huyus Ecclesiae Cathedralis
Decani
Ubi saeva indignatio
Ulterius
Cor lacerare nequit
Abi Viator
Et imitare, si poteris
Strenuum pro virili
Libertatis Vindicatorem
Obiit 19 Die Mensis Octobris
A.D. 1745 Anno Ætatis 78

which William Butler Yeats translated from the Latin as:

Swift has sailed into his rest.
Savage indignation there
cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
world-besotted traveller.
He served human liberty.

Selected works:

• A Discourse on the Contests and Dissentions in Athens and Rome, 1701
• A Tale of a Tub, 1704
• The Battle of the Books, 1704
• The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers, 1708
• An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, 1711
• The Conduct of the Allies, 1711
• A Journal to Stella, (Written 1710-13, Published 1766)
• The Public Spirit of the Whigs, 1714
• Cadenus and Vanessa, 1714
• Proposal for the universal use of Irish Manufacture, 1720
• Drapier's Letters, 1724-25
• Cadenus and Vanessa, 1726
• Travels into several remote Nations of the World... By Lemuel Gulliver, 1726
• A Modest Proposal, 1729
• Directions to Servants, 1731
• Polite and Ingenious Conversation, 1738
• Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, 1739
• Three Sermons and Prayers, 1744
• The Works, 1784 (17 Vols., Rev. 1812, 24 Vols.)
• Writings on Religion and the Church, 1898
• Swift's Irish Pamphlets, 1991
• The Intelligencer, 1992

Bibliography about Jonathan Swift:

• Swift's Landscape by Carole Fabricant, 1982
• The Character of Swift's Satire, ed. by Claude J. Rawson, 1983
• by J.A. Downie, 1984
• Jonathan Swift by David Nokes, 1985