[Back To Fiction Writers]

Jonathan Swift
(1667-1745):

Fatherless from the beginning of his life, and motherless for some of his crucial formative years, Swift, although he had political ambitions earlier on, settled for being the Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Ireland.

There are those (I suppose I should be counted among them) who concluded Swift was a neurotic with a "excremental vision." Swift claimed to "hate and detest that animal called man," but to "heartly love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth." He was buried beneath the Latin epitaph he composed himself, which in English reads: "He has gone where savage indignation can lacerate his heart no more."

Swift's most famous work, of course, was Gullivers Travels, or, as it is more formally known, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver; it is a satiric masterpiece; it satirizes man's abuse of human reason as reflected in his political, social and academic institutions; at best, man is foolish; at worst, he is nothing more than an ape; ... it is a bitter denunciation of mankind; ... [a reflection] on man's corruption of his highest attribute, reason." (Benet's.)

Swift's works are available on the 'NET .