Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World

Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World is a biography published in 2013 by the American author and historian Leo Damrosch. It covers the life of Jonathan Swift who in the eighteenth century wrote Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, and A Tale of the Tub. Many scholars consider Swift to be one of the greatest satirists and ironists in the history of the English language. While relying on earlier academic research to a significant degree, Damrosch also examines some of the more ambiguous aspects of Swift's life from a new perspective, including his questionable relationship with the much younger Hester Johnson and his seemingly contradictory feelings about the church. For Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World, Damrosch received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and a Pulitzer Prize nomination.

Born in 1667 in Dublin, Ireland, Swift was raised by his Uncle Godwin. Swift's father, a lawyer also named Jonathan Swift, died of syphilis seven months before the birth of his son. Allegedly, his father stated that he contracted syphilis not from another woman but from "dirty sheets" while traveling out of town. Godwin was close friends with Sir John Temple, a prominent Irish lawyer and politician who served in the House of Commons in both Ireland and England at various times.

In 1682, at the age of fifteen, Swift enrolled at Trinity College to pursue a degree that would prepare him to join the priesthood. After receiving a Bachelor's Degree, Swift continued to study for his Master's Degree but was forced to abandon his studies when political turmoil brought on by the Glorious Revolution of 1688 caused him to flee Ireland. Through his Uncle Godwin's connections, Swift gained employment with John Temple's son, William Temple, in Surrey, England, serving as Temple's secretary. Here, Damrosch makes references to rumors that William Temple was in fact Swift's biological father, adding that while it is "not impossible," it also cannot be proven.
A prominent diplomat, Temple entrusted Swift with a number of important tasks. In at least one instance, Swift traveled to London on Temple's behalf to negotiate with the throne over a proposed bill. It was at Temple's Moor Park estate that Swift first met Hester Johnson (sometimes styled as "Esther Johnson"). The daughter of Temple's housekeeper, Hester was only nine years old when the twenty-two year old Swift first arrived at Moor Park. He became her tutor, and as the years went on, their relationship grew more intimate. Complicating this already thorny relationship is the fact that Hester--whom Swift took to calling "Stella"--may actually have been Swift's half-sister. In addition to the unsubstantiated rumors that Temple was Swift's biological father, there's somewhat stronger evidence to suggest Temple was Hester's biological father as well. For Damrosch's part, he concludes that there is significant evidence to suggest this is the case, though he can't say the same for the rumors about Swift's parentage.



Despite the important work he frequently did for Temple, Swift sensed that his political career was going nowhere. So he decided to once again pursue the priesthood, moving back to Ireland. He managed to obtain the title of prebendary, a relatively low-ranking dignitary in the Church of Ireland. Isolated to a small, remote parish in the town of Kilroot, Swift was more or less miserable. After around two years in Kilroot, Swift returned to Temple's employ until his boss' death in 1699. Swift found, however, that his political career was in even worse shape after Temple's death than when he was alive. After once again abandoning politics, Swift managed to become a minister to a small congregation in Laracor, about twenty miles outside Dublin. Despite being no closer to the power centers of national politics or religion, Swift appears to have been rather content in this position, spending his free time gardening and writing.

Swift's first major work was A Tale of the Tub which he published in 1704. A vicious satire on religion and English morals, the work all but torpedoed any hopes he still had of advancing his career in the Church of Ireland. Swift moved back to London where he exchanged regular correspondence with his "Stella." These letters survived in the form of A Journal to Stella which was published after Swift's death. Damrosch dissects these letters in search of definitive evidence that their relationship was sexual in nature. Whatever the case, the letters are playful, intimate, and in some cases sexually-charged. The two use a kind of secret language at times, and in one letter Swift calls Stella a "wheedling slut." Around this time, Swift carried on an even more ambiguous relationship with an even younger woman named Esther Vanhomrigh, whom he nicknamed "Vanessa."

Meanwhile, Swift's writing grew more explicitly political, culminating in 1729's masterpiece A Modest Proposal, in which Swift satirized the cruel attitudes of the rich toward the poor by suggesting that impoverished Irishmen could make a living by selling their children as food for the wealthy. Three years earlier, Swift published his most well-known long-form work, the novel Gulliver's Travels.



Swift lived until 1745 but suffered from extreme dementia during his final years. Of his worsening mental illness, Damrosch quotes T.S. Eliot who remarked, "Real irony is an expression of suffering, and the greatest ironist was the one who suffered the most - Swift."

Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World is an illuminating biography that doesn't shy away from some of the more controversial aspects of Swift's life.