Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift is best remembered today as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, the satiric fantasy that quickly became a classic and has remained in print for nearly three centuries. Yet Swift also wrote many other influential works, was a major political and religious figure in his time, and became a national hero, beloved for his fierce protest against English exploitation of his native Ireland. What is really known today about the enigmatic man behind these accomplishments? Can the facts of his life be separated from the fictions?
In this deeply researched biography, Leo Damrosch draws on discoveries made over the past thirty years to tell the story of Swift’s life anew. Probing holes in the existing evidence, he takes seriously some daring speculations about Swift’s parentage, love life, and various personal relationships and shows how Swift’s public version of his life—the one accepted until recently—was deliberately misleading. Swift concealed aspects of himself and his relationships, and other people in his life helped to keep his secrets.
Assembling suggestive clues, Damrosch re-narrates the events of Swift’s life while making vivid the sights, sounds, and smells of his English and Irish surroundings.Through his own words and those of a wide circle of friends, a complex Swift emerges: a restless, combative, empathetic figure, a man of biting wit and powerful mind, and a major figure in the history of world letters.

Leo Damrosch is Ernest Bernbaum Research Professor of Literature at Harvard University. He is the author of nine books, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius, a National Book Award Finalist, and Tocqueville’s Discovery of America. He lives in Newton, MA.

Advance Praise for Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World

“Leo Damrosch conjures up Jonathan Swift with hallucinatory vividness, allowing the contradictions of this baffling, elusive genius full rein. He recovers in rich detail the world in which Gulliver’s Travels and other enduring masterpieces were created. This is a brilliant and humane biography.”— Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

“Thoroughly researched, vividly written, and convincingly argued, Leo Damrosch’s new biography of Jonathan Swift more than holds its own among such great predecessors as Walter Scott and Irvin Ehrenpreis, and presents a standard that contemporary scholarly prose is rarely capable of matching.”— Robert Mahony, The Catholic University of America

Praise for Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius

“The erratic, inventive urgency of the life is all here. A delight to read.”—Stacy Schiff, New York Times Book Review

“A magnificent accomplishment.”—Alan Helms, The Boston Globe

“An important book, but also a provocative and exceptionally entertaining one.”—Michael Dirda,Washington Post Book World

“Immensely enjoyable and fast-paced.”— Louis Menand, author of The Metaphysical Club

Praise for Tocqueville’s Discovery of America

“Scintillating.”—James Wood, The New Yorker

“The human young Tocqueville is much more impressive than the cold abstraction, and for helping to bring him to life we are in Leo Damrosch’s debt.” — Sean Wilentz, The American Prospect