JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745)

Although it has achieved lasting fame as fiction, fable and children's book, Gulliver's Travels was a direct and bitter satire of the English court, political parties, religious dissensions, philosophies, men of science, historians and projectors of Swift's day. Swift, who was born in Dublin, served in England as secretary to Sir William Temple from 1689 to 1699 and returned to Ireland in 1714. He was involved in many political controversies, especially those relating to the treatment of the Irish by the English, and his satirical pamphlets were widely circulated, read, and influential. Alexander Pope and John Gay claimed that Gulliver's Travels was read "from the cabinet council to the nursery."

Gift in Memory of Albert N. Raub,
President of Delalware College 1888-1896