Early life Jonathan Swift was born on 30 November 1667 in
Dublin in the
Kingdom of Ireland. He was the second child and only son of Jonathan Swift and his wife Abigail Erick (or Herrick) of
Frisby on the Wreake in
Leicestershire. His father was a native of
Goodrich, Herefordshire, but he accompanied his brothers to
Ireland to seek their fortunes in law after their
royalist father's estate was brought to ruin during the
English Civil War. His maternal grandfather, James Ericke, was the vicar of
Thornton in Leicestershire. In 1634 the vicar was convicted of
Puritan practices. Sometime thereafter, Ericke and his family, including his young daughter Abigail, fled to Ireland. Swift's father joined his elder brother, Godwin, in the practice of law in Ireland. He died in Dublin about seven months before his namesake was born. He died of
syphilis, which he said he got from dirty sheets when out of town. His mother returned to England after his birth, leaving him in the care of his uncle Godwin Swift, a close friend and confidant of
Sir John Temple, whose son later employed Swift as his secretary. At the age of one, child Jonathan was taken by his
wet nurse to her hometown of
Whitehaven,
Cumberland, England. He said that there he learned to read the Bible. His nurse returned him to his mother, still in Ireland, when he was three. Swift's family had several interesting literary connections. His grandmother Elizabeth (Dryden) Swift was the niece of
Sir Erasmus Dryden, grandfather of poet
John Dryden. The same grandmother's aunt Katherine (Throckmorton) Dryden was a first cousin of
Elizabeth, wife of
Sir Walter Raleigh. His great-great-grandmother Margaret (Godwin) Swift was the sister of
Francis Godwin, author of
The Man in the Moone which influenced parts of Swift's ''
Gulliver's Travels''. His uncle Thomas Swift married a daughter of poet and playwright
Sir William Davenant, who was rumored to be a godson of
William Shakespeare. Swift's benefactor and uncle Godwin Swift took primary responsibility for the young man, sending him with one of his cousins to
Kilkenny College (also attended by philosopher
George Berkeley). He entered
Trinity College Dublin in 1682, financed by Godwin's son Willoughby. The four-year course followed a curriculum largely set in the Middle Ages for the priesthood. The lectures were dominated by
Aristotelian logic and philosophy. The basic skill taught to students was debate, and they were expected to be able to argue both sides of any argument or topic. Swift was an above-average student but not exceptional, and received his B.A. in 1686 "by special grace".
Adult life Swift was studying for his master's degree when political troubles in Ireland surrounding the
Glorious Revolution forced him to leave for England in 1688, where his mother helped him get a position as secretary and personal assistant of
Sir William Temple at
Moor Park, Farnham. Temple was an English diplomat who had arranged the
Triple Alliance of 1668. He had retired from public service to his country estate, to tend his gardens and write his memoirs. Gaining his employer's confidence, Swift "was often trusted with matters of great importance." Within three years of their acquaintance, Temple introduced his secretary to
William III and sent him to London to urge the King to consent to a bill for triennial Parliaments. Swift took up his residence at Moor Park where he met
Esther Johnson, then eight years old, the daughter of an impoverished widow who acted as companion to Temple's sister
Lady Giffard. Swift was 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. In 1690, Swift left Temple for Ireland because of his health, but returned to Moor Park the following year. The illness consisted of fits of vertigo or giddiness, now believed to be
Ménière's disease, and it continued to plague him throughout his life. During this second stay with Temple, Swift received his M.A. from
Hart Hall,
Oxford, in 1692. He then left Moor Park, apparently despairing of gaining a better position through Temple's patronage, in order to become an ordained priest in the Established
Church of Ireland. He was appointed to the
prebend of Kilroot in the
Diocese of Connor in 1694, 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, he may well have become romantically involved with Jane Waring, whom he called "Varina", the sister of an old college friend. made enemies among some of Temple's family and friends, in particular Temple's formidable sister Martha, Lady Giffard, who objected to indiscretions included in the memoirs. Swift's 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 Justice of Ireland. However, when he reached Ireland, he found that the secretaryship had already been given to another, though he soon obtained the living of Laracor,
Agher, and Rathbeggan, and the prebend of Dunlavin in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. Swift ministered to a congregation of about 15 at
Laracor, which was just over from
Summerhill, County Meath, and from Dublin. He had abundant leisure for cultivating his garden, making a canal after the Dutch fashion of Moor Park, planting willows, and rebuilding the vicarage. As chaplain to Lord Berkeley, he spent much of his time in Dublin and travelled to London frequently over the next ten years. In 1701, he anonymously published the political pamphlet
A Discourse on the Contests and Dissentions in Athens and Rome.
Writer Swift resided in
Trim, County Meath, after 1700. He wrote many of his works during this period. In February 1702, Swift received his
Doctor of Divinity degree from
Trinity College Dublin. That spring he travelled to England and then returned to Ireland in October, accompanied by Esther Johnson—now 20—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, notably his close friend
Thomas Sheridan, believed that they were secretly married in 1716; others, like Swift's housekeeper Mrs Brent and Rebecca Dingley, who lived with Stella all through her years in Ireland, dismissed the story as absurd. Yet Swift certainly did not wish her to marry anyone else: in 1704, when their mutual friend
William Tisdall informed Swift that he intended to propose to Stella, Swift wrote to him to dissuade him from the idea. Although the tone of the letter was courteous, Swift privately expressed his disgust for Tisdall as an "interloper", and they were estranged for many years. In 1713, Swift was appointed as Dean of St Patrick's Cathdral, Dublin, a position he held until his death. During his visits to England in these years, Swift published
A Tale of a Tub and
The Battle of the Books (1704) and began to gain a reputation as a writer. This led to close, lifelong friendships with
Alexander Pope,
John Gay, and
John Arbuthnot, forming the core of the Martinus
Scriblerus Club (founded in 1713). Swift became increasingly active politically in these years. Swift had supported the
Glorious Revolution and early in his life belonged to the
Whigs. As a member of the
Anglican Church, he feared a return of the Catholic monarchy and "Papist" absolutism. and often acted as mediator between
Henry St John (Viscount Bolingbroke), the secretary of state for foreign affairs (1710–1715), 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, collected and published after his death 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 the accession of
George I that year, the Whigs returned to power, and the Tory leaders were tried for treason for conducting secret negotiations with France. Swift has been described by scholars as "a Whig in politics and Tory in religion" and Swift related his own views in similar terms, stating that as "a lover of liberty, I found myself to be what they called a Whig in politics ... But, as to religion, I confessed myself to be an High-Churchman." Esther followed Swift to Ireland in 1714 and settled at her old family home,
Celbridge Abbey. Their uneasy relationship continued for some years; then there appears to have been a confrontation, possibly involving Esther Johnson. Esther Vanhomrigh died in 1723 at the age of 35, after having destroyed the will she had made in Swift's favour. Another lady with whom he had a close but less intense relationship was
Anne Long, a "toast" of the
Kit-Cat Club.
Final years Before the fall of the Tory government, Swift had 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. Her dislike has been attributed to
A Tale of a Tub, which she thought blasphemous, compounded by
The Windsor Prophecy, where Swift, with a surprising lack of tact, advised the Queen on which of her bedchamber ladies she should and should not trust. The best position his friends could secure for him was the
Deanery of St Patrick's; while this appointment was not in the Queen's gift, Anne, who could be a bitter enemy, made it clear that Swift would not have received the preferment if she could have prevented it. 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". , including Jonathan Swift 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 Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720), ''
Drapier's Letters (1724), and A Modest Proposal
(1729), earned him the status of an Irish patriot. This new role was unwelcome to the Government, which made clumsy attempts to silence him. His printer, Edward Waters, was convicted of seditious libel in 1720, but four years later a grand jury refused to find that the Drapier's Letters'', which though written under a pseudonym were universally known to be Swift's work, were seditious. Swift responded with an attack on the Irish judiciary almost unparalleled in its ferocity, his principal target being the "vile and profligate villain"
William Whitshed,
Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. 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 in which 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, a treaty he regarded as a good thing accomplished in an unfortunate manner. In 1726 he paid a long-deferred visit to London, taking with him the manuscript of ''Gulliver's Travels''. During his visit, he stayed with his old friends Alexander Pope, John Arbuthnot and John Gay, who helped him arrange for the anonymous publication of his book 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. In 1727, Swift returned to England one more time and stayed once again with Alexander Pope. The visit was cut short when Swift, receiving word that Esther Johnson was dying, rushed back home to be with her. He became increasingly quarrelsome, and long-standing friendships, like that with Thomas Sheridan, ended without sufficient cause. To protect him from unscrupulous hangers-on, who had begun to prey on the great man, his closest companions had him declared of "unsound mind and memory." However, it was long believed by many that Swift was actually insane at this point. In his book
Literature and Western Man, author
J. B. Priestley even cites the final chapters of ''Gulliver's Travels'' as proof of Swift's approaching "insanity". Bewley attributes his decline to 'terminal dementia'. In 1744, Alexander Pope died. Then on 19 October 1745, Swift died, at nearly 78. After being laid out in public view for the people of Dublin to pay their last respects, he was buried in his own cathedral by Esther Johnson's side, in accordance with his wishes. The bulk of his fortune (£12,000) 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.
Swift, Stella and Vanessa – an alternative view British politician
Michael Foot was a great admirer of Swift and wrote about him extensively. In
Debts of Honour he cites with approbation an explanation propounded by
Denis Johnston of Swift's behaviour towards Stella and Vanessa. Pointing to contradictions in the received information about Swift's origins and parentage, Johnston postulates that Swift's real father was Sir William Temple's father,
Sir John Temple, who was
Master of the Rolls in Dublin at the time. It is widely thought that Stella was Sir William Temple's illegitimate daughter. So, if these speculations are to be credited, Swift was Sir William's brother and Stella's uncle. Marriage or close relations between Swift and Stella would therefore have been
incestuous, an unthinkable prospect. It follows that Swift could not have married Vanessa without Stella appearing to be a cast-off mistress, which appearance he would not contemplate leaving. Johnston's theory is expounded fully in his book
In Search of Swift. He is also cited in the
Dictionary of Irish Biography and the theory is presented without attribution in the
Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. ==Works==