Jonathan Swift (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Victoria Glendinning
- First Published: 1998
- Type of Work: Literary biography
- Time of Work: 1667-1745
- Setting: England and Ireland
- Principal Characters: Jonathan Swift, Robert Harley, Esther (Stella) Johnson, Sir William Temple, Hester (Vanessa) Vanhomrigh, Alexander Pope, Henry St. John
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: Politics, Sexism, Love or romance, Literature, Poetry or poets, Letter writing, Clergy, Patriotism, Ireland or Irish people
- Locales: England, Ireland
In his “Epistle to a Lady,” Jonathan Swift’s friend Alexander Pope writes, “Woman’s at best a contradiction still.” The same might be said of Swift. He was a pacifist who hated passionately; an Irish patriot who savaged his country in print; a devout Anglican who counted among his closest friends a Catholic (Pope) and a freethinker (Henry St. John, first Viscount Bolingbroke); a seeming misogynist whom two women followed from England to Ireland; a stickler for cleanliness who wrote some of the foulest verse in the English language; a champion of the underdog who enjoyed...
[The entire page is 2148 words long]
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