Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, writer, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who served as Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, earning him the nickname "Dean Swift". Jonathan Swift was born on November 30, 1667, in the city of Dublin, Ireland. Jonathan Swift (1640–1667) and his wife Abigail Erick (or Herrick) of Frisby on the Wreake had two children. He was the sole son of Jonathan Swift (1640–1667) and his wife Abigail Erick (or Herrick) of Frisby on the Wreake. His father was a native of Goodrich, Herefordshire, but after his Royalist father's farm was ruined during the English Civil War, he accompanied his brothers to Ireland to seek their fortunes in law. James Ericke, his maternal grandfather, was the vicar of Thornton in Leicestershire. The vicar was found guilty of Puritan practices in 1634. Ericke and his family, including their little daughter Abigail, moved to Ireland shortly after.

Swift's publications include A Tale of a Tub (1704), An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1712), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1728). He is considered the foremost prose humorist in the English language by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, while his poetry is less well recognized. All of his works were first published anonymously or under pseudonyms such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, and M. B. Drapier. He was a master of two satirical styles: Horatian and Juvenalian.

A Tale of a Tub was written between 1694 and 1697 and published in 1704. It is, without a doubt, his most difficult and probably best satire. The Story is a prose satire separated among sections of "digression" and a "tale" about three brothers, each representing one of western Christianity's main branches.