Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland on 30 November 1667, second child and only son of Jonathan Swift and Abigalie Erick Swift. His father was dead before Jonathan Junior was born, so the child´s education was arranged by other relatives. Jonathan graduated from Trinily College, Dublin, in1686 and then went toEngland to try his luck. He found a job as secretary to sir William temple, and it was in sir William´s household that he met Esther (Stella) Johnson and became her tutor. By then sir William was an extremely important ststesman of the day. He helped arranging the marriage of the future British monarchs William and Mary.

Anyway, Jonathan a lot of stuff in between tutoring sessions, but unfortunately burned most of it. The writing that survived shows signs of the great satirist he was to become. But when Sir William died in 1699, Jonathan was left scrambling for a job and eventually ended up with several odd little Church positions back in Ireland. He became a very fashionable satiric writer as far as Dublin society was concerned.

In the early 1700´s, a man named John Partridge, a cobbler by trade, took up priting almanacs to make some extra money. He challenged his readers to try their hands at prophecy and see if they could beat Partridge´s own prophetic abilities. Well, Partridge had made some attacks on the Church of England, and in 1708, Jonathan decided to stand up for his employer. Using the name Isaac Bickerstaff, he prophesied "a trifle...‘(Partridge) will infallibly die upon the 29th of March next, about eleven at Night, of a raging fever. "At the proper time, using another name, Jonathan announced the fulfillment of said prophecy.

Partridge, in his next almanac, protested loudly that he was still alive, but no one believed him. The Stationer´s Register had already removed his name from their rolls, and that was good enough for most people. Somewhere around 1716, some biographers say he married Stella Johnson, but there’s no proof of this, and you’d think there’d be some sign if he had. Though they lived near each other for most of their lives, they were always very properly chaperoned and may very well have never been alone together.

Gulliver’s Travels was published in 1726, Jonathan’s first big dive into prose. Though it’s been pretty solidly labelled a children’s book, it’s also a great satire of the times that is pretty much beyond most children. It shows Jonathan’s desire to encourage people to read deeper and not take things for granted: readers who paid attention could match all of Gulliver’s tall tales with current events and long-term societal problems.

In 1729, Jonathan wrote,"A Modest Proposal," supposedly written by an intelligent and objective "politícal arithmetician" who had carefully studied Ireland before making his proposal. Most of you probably know this one. The author calmly suggests one solution for both the problem of overpopulation and the growing numbers of undernourished people: breed those children who would otherwise go hungry or be mistreated in order to feed the general public.

Jonathan died on 19 October 1745, aged 78. He hadn´t been in a good frame of mind for some time. He managed to keep some of his sense of humor, though-his last will and testament provided funds to establish somewere around Dublin a hospital for "ideots & lunaticks" because "No Nation wanted[needed] it so much."

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