Find out more about the original author of Gulliver's Travels, a man with many names and tales...
NAME: Jonathan Swift
PSEUDONYMS: Lemuel Gulliver, M.B Drapier, Isaac Bickerstaff, Simon Wagstaff, Esq
BORN: 1667, Dublin, Ireland.
EDUCATION: 1682, Trinity College, Dublin
OCCUPATION: Satirist, essayist, clergyman, political pamphleteer, poet, priest.
BACKGROUND: Jonathan Swift was born in Catholic Ireland to English Anglican parents at a time when political tensions were high
WORKS OF NOTE: A Tale of a Tub, Drapier's Letters, A Modest Proposal and Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships, by Lemuel Gulliver (Gulliver's Travels)
PUBLISHING: Gulliver's Travels was originally published without Jonathan Swifts name as a fake autobiography in 1726 and has been so popular that it has never been out of print since.
SOCIETIES: Jonathan Swift was a member of what was called the Scriblerus Club - an informal group of authors including Alexander Pope, John Gay and Thomas Parnell.
LITERARY STYLE: Prose, satire, poetry
FAMOUS WORDS: The Oxford English Dictionary lists Swift as the first person to use the word “cowboy”.
DIED: 1745 aged 77, Dublin, Ireland.
Come and see our theatrical adaptation of Gulliver's Travels written by Mike Kenny and Satinder Chohan that is being staged in Queens Park from 16 - 27 August.