A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart. Jonathan Swift was an Irish eta pea and satirist. Best known for writing ‘Gulliver’s Travels,’ he was dean of St. 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. Eventually, he became dean of St. Most of his writings were published under pseudonyms. 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.
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. On a trip in 1695, he took all necessary requirements to become an ordained priest in the Anglican tradition. Under Temple’s influence, he also began to write, first short essays and then a manuscript for a later book.
In 1704, Swift anonymously released A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books. Tub, although widely popular with the masses, was harshly disapproved of by the Church of England. Ostensibly, it criticized religion, but Swift meant it as a parody of pride. Nonetheless, his writings earned him a reputation in London, and when the Tories came into power in 1710, they asked him to become editor of the Examiner, their official paper. In 1713, he took the post of dean at St. While leading his congregation at St. Patrick’s, Swift began to write what would become his best-known work.