50 Fun Facts About Jonathan Swift

Under which fictional ship's surgeon's name did Swift publish his 1726 masterpiece?

The book was an immediate hit, with three printings in its first year.

In which year was Swift born, about seven months after his father's death?

He was born on 30 November in Dublin.

Swift was appointed dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, in which year?

The post earned him the sobriquet Dean Swift.

What did Swift's 1729 essay A Modest Proposal suggest the Irish poor do to escape poverty?

It is one of the most famous works of Juvenalian satire ever written.

Swift is credited with inventing which popular woman's name through a poem?

He built it from Van, the start of Esther Vanhomrigh's surname, and Essa, a pet form of Esther.

What was the fictional island of tiny people that Swift created?

Its people are engaged in petty political disputes.

Which of Swift's pseudonyms is described as the most recognisable of those he used for his early works?

Scholars think the pseudonyms may have shielded him from persecution.

Of what disease did Swift's father die?

He claimed to have caught it from dirty sheets while travelling.

Where did Swift's wet nurse take him at the age of one, keeping him until he was three?

He said he learned to read the Bible there.

Which philosopher also attended Kilkenny College, where Swift began school at six?

Swift arrived not yet knowing his Latin declensions and started in a lower form.

Swift received his BA from Trinity College Dublin in 1686 by what unusual dispensation?

He was an above-average but not exceptional student.

For which retired English diplomat did Swift work as secretary at Moor Park in Surrey?

Temple had arranged the Triple Alliance of 1668.

What nickname did Swift give the eight-year-old girl he tutored at Moor Park?

Their close but ambiguous relationship lasted the rest of her life.

Swift's lifelong vertigo and giddiness are retrospectively attributed to which condition?

The illness first forced him to leave Temple's service for Ireland in 1690.

From which Oxford college did Swift receive his MA in 1692?

He then took holy orders in the Church of Ireland.

Where was Swift's first miserable clerical post, near Carrickfergus, from 1694?

He may have courted Jane Waring, whom he called Varina, while there.

Roughly how large was Swift's congregation at Laracor, County Meath?

He had abundant leisure to garden, dig a Dutch-style canal and plant willows.

In which County Meath town did Swift live after 1700, writing many of his works?

The town has a street named after him and once held a Swift festival.

In A Tale of a Tub, three sons each inherit what from their father, never to be altered?

The sons represent the main threads of Christianity and soon look for loopholes in the will.

Swift's Battle of the Books defended his patron in a quarrel over which ancient letters' authenticity?

Scholar Richard Bentley had shown the Epistles were a later forgery.

Which almanac-maker did Swift, under his best-known pseudonym, predict would die on 29 March 1708?

Partridge's own denials were widely disbelieved.

Swift formed the core of which literary circle with Alexander Pope, John Gay and John Arbuthnot?

It was founded in 1713.

Which Tory periodical did Swift edit after the party came to power in 1710?

His 1711 pamphlet The Conduct of the Allies attacked the Whigs for prolonging the war with France.

Swift's 1711 pamphlet The Conduct of the Allies helped pave the way for which peace settlement?

It ended the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713.

Under what title were Swift's London letters to his former pupil in Ireland published?

They record his years mediating between Bolingbroke and Harley.

Scholars sum up Swift's allegiances in which phrase, which he himself echoed?

He confessed himself a High-Churchman but a lover of liberty.

Which monarch found Swift's A Tale of a Tub blasphemous and blocked his hopes of an English church post?

His tactless Windsor Prophecy about her bedchamber ladies did not help.

Returning to Ireland after the Whigs regained power, Swift said he would live like what?

He turned instead to writing in support of Irish causes.

The Drapier's Letters of 1724 attacked whose patent to mint copper coinage for Ireland?

The outcry forced the patent to be rescinded in September 1725.

What reward did the Irish government offer for the identity of the Drapier?

Nobody turned Swift in, though everyone knew.

What banner greeted Swift on his return to Dublin from England during the coinage controversy?

A grand jury refused to find the letters seditious.

Which Lord Chief Justice of Ireland did Swift attack as a 'vile and profligate villain'?

His printer Edward Waters had been convicted of seditious libel in 1720.

At which County Laois residence did Swift write much of Gulliver's Travels?

He carried the manuscript to London in 1726 for anonymous publication.

Gulliver extinguishing a palace fire by urinating on it has been read as a metaphor for what?

Swift thought the treaty a good thing accomplished in an unfortunate manner.

What did Esther Vanhomrigh do shortly before her death in 1723?

She had followed Swift to Ireland and settled at Celbridge Abbey.

What was found in Swift's desk after his death, wrapped in paper bearing four poignant words?

The paper read: Only a woman's hair. He had been too ill to attend her funeral in 1728.

Which of Swift's friends believed he and his former pupil were secretly married in 1716?

His housekeeper Mrs Brent and Rebecca Dingley dismissed the story as absurd.

What did the Dean write in 1731 that was published in 1739?

In it he recalled the Drapier's Letters as one of his best achievements.

Comparing himself to a tree, how did Swift predict he would die?

He feared becoming mentally disabled and was declared of unsound mind in his last years.

What did Swift leave the bulk of his £12,000 fortune to found?

St Patrick's Hospital opened in 1757 and still exists.

Which poet translated Swift's Latin epitaph, with its 'savage indignation', into English verse?

Swift wrote the epitaph himself.

Beside whom is Swift buried in St Patrick's Cathedral, in accordance with his wishes?

He asked to be buried under the pillar next to the monument of a primate he had disliked.

Some believe Swift's terse epitaph was a satire on a grandiose sixty-line inscription nearby. Whose?

The two tombs originally stood side by side.

A crater on which moon of Mars is named after Swift, who predicted the moons' existence?

Gulliver's Laputan astronomers describe two Martian moons.

Which two later writers named Swift among their greatest influences?

A 2017 study of library holdings found Swift the most popular Irish author worldwide.

A Modest Proposal's narrator cites which notorious impostor who claimed to be from Formosa?

The impostor had already confessed his fraud in 1706.

Which land in Gulliver's Travels is ruled by rational horses living alongside savage Yahoos?

Brobdingnag is the land of giants and Laputa the flying island of impractical intellectuals.

Which two ancient satirical styles was Swift a master of?

His deadpan irony gave the language the word Swiftian.

Which Leicestershire vicar, Swift's grandfather, fled to Ireland after being convicted of Puritan practices in 1634?

Swift's mother Abigail was that vicar's daughter.

Swift was related to which poet, whose grandfather was the uncle of Swift's grandmother?

Another ancestor, Francis Godwin, wrote The Man in the Moone, which influenced Gulliver.