Q 01/05

What first name did Swift give Gulliver, the ship's surgeon who narrates his Travels?

A) Lemuel

B) Ezekiel

C) Obadiah

D) Tobias

Answer · why

A) Lemuel

Lemuel. Swift kept his own name off the book: a preface by an invented cousin presents Lemuel Gulliver as a real sea captain, by then retired to Notti...

Q 02/05

Swift's father died before he was born, so which relative paid for his schooling?

A) Grandfather

B) Stepfather

C) Uncle

D) Brother

Answer · why

C) Uncle

His uncle Godwin Swift paid for his nephew's schooling, but Swift resented the help as grudging and is said to have called it 'the education of a dog'...

Q 03/05

From 1713 until his death, Swift held which office at St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin?

A) Bishop

B) Dean

C) Archbishop

D) Provost

Answer · why

B) Dean

Dean. He always regarded the job as a kind of exile, taken only after his friends had failed to win him a church post in England.

Q 04/05

What did Swift's A Modest Proposal suggest Ireland's poor do to escape poverty?

A) Sell their children as food to the rich

B) Emigrate to the American colonies

C) Convert to the Protestant faith

D) Refuse to pay their rent

Answer · why

A) Sell their children as food to the rich

It suggests they sell their children as food to the rich. The deadpan narrator then waves away the real remedies Swift had urged, such as taxing absen...

Q 05/05

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

A) Wendy

B) Fiona

C) Pamela

D) Vanessa

Answer · why

D) Vanessa

Vanessa. He is thought to have built it from the Van of Esther Vanhomrigh's surname and part of her first name, and it later became the name of a genu...