About
"Swift" by Carl Van Doren is a literary biography written in the early 20th century. It presents a penetrating portrait of Jonathan Swift as a proud, embattled cleric and satirist, tracing the making of his mind, his politics and church loyalties, and his fraught ties with Stella and Vanessa, while challenging the comforting misreading of him through Gulliver’s Travels.
The opening of the biography argues that mankind has tamed Swift by turning Gulliver’s Travels into a children’s toy, then sets the governing image of his life as “fire and ice.” It follows his injured pride amid genteel poverty, his English family’s Irish foothold, a childhood abduction to Whitehaven, and a sullen schooling at Kilkenny and Trinity marked by disdain for scholasticism, irregular conduct, and early health troubles (vertigo and deafness). Driven to England by the Revolution, he becomes Sir William Temple’s dependent at Moor Park, meets the child Esther “Stella” Johnson, flirts idly elsewhere, and struggle
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This work is public domain or openly licensed. The licence terms are published by the source.
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