In the spring of 1667, Jonathan Swift, a full cousin to the poet Dryden and a steward to the Society of King’s Inns, died in poverty leaving a widow. Seven months later the widow gave birth to a baby, named Johnathan after his father . Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irishman. His mother left him when he was 3 years old to go to Ireland. His nurse-maid said that he was too weak to survive the voyage so his mother left him in her care. When his nurse took him to Ireland at age 5, they found that the mother had now go to England to live with a relative.
His uncle Godwin took him in and sent him to Kilkenny School, where he carved his name into a desk. At 14 he went to the University of Dublin. He became very reckless and violent because he didn’t like the school’s discipline, or the things he was forced to learn. During this time he started writing including in the start of Tale of a Tub. Swift left college 2 years after his uncle died without any friends whatsoever. Soon Swift went to Oxford to study, where he made his first piece of poetry, a translation of the 18th Ode of the Second Book of Horace. He soon gained a reputation for his writing even though is own cousin told him he’d “Never be a poet.”
After Oxford he gained a job in 1694 as a Deacon at 100 pounds a year. Swift soon got tired of the rude people there and went to live in Moor Park in 1695, where he finished Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books, neither of which was published until 1704, almost 10 years later. Soon after his employer dies swift meets a woman named Stella, who was most likely his truest friend over his lifetime.
Swift’s carer really started in 1701 when his anonymously published Dissentions in Athens and Rome. It wasn’t until a man was impeached over the book that Swift came forward and admitted that he wrote the book, in 1702. Four years after his next 2 books were published in 1704, “The Sentiments of a Church of England”, “Arguments against Abolishing Christianity”, “Letter upon the Sacramental Test”, and “Bickerstaff Predictions for 1708″ were published. In 1709 three more books were published: “Project for the Advancement of Learning”, “Vindication of Bickerstaff”, and “Ancient Prophecy”.
Swift continued writing until 1745 when he died, having published many different and famous works including Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal.
Source: http://www.genealogy.org/~ajmorris/ireland/swift.html
