A Tale of a Tub and Other Writings

An Irish priest and one-time secretary to Sir William Temple, Swift is best remembered for Gulliver's Travels, an excoriating satire on all aspects of English life. Deeply concerned with the state of Ireland, he wrote a series of satires in which he blamed England for the "Irish problem." (In one of these, "A Modest Proposal," he drily suggested that Irish children be slaughtered and served as food to upper-class Englishmen.) Chronically ill for much of his life, Swift eventually suffered a paralytic stroke and died amidst rumors that he had lost his sanity.