Specially Priced Vintage Classics: Gulliver’s Travels

Jonathan Swift was born on 30 November 1667 in Dublin, and educated at Trinity College and Oxford University. After working for a time as secretary to Sir William Temple in England, Swift was ordained as a priest of the Church of Ireland and returned to Dublin in 1695.

In 1713 he became Dean of St Patrick’s. The first of his major satirical works, A Tale of a Tub, was published in 1704 and through his writing he became close friends with the poet Alexander Pope.

Together with other writers, they founded a literary group called the Martinus Scriblerus Club in 1714. Gulliver’s Travels(1726) is the only book for which he received any money and he never wrote under his own name. He died on 19 October 1745 and was buried in St Patrick’s.

His Latin epitaph, written by himself, reads: ‘Here lies the body of Jonathan Swift, D.D., dean of this cathedral, where burning indignation can no longer lacerate his heart. Go, traveller, and imitate if you can a man who was an undaunted champion of liberty.’