Winner of the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography: The life of satirist Jonathan Swift, written by a master biographer and leading scholar of eighteenth-century literature Selected by New York Times Book Review as a Best Book Since 2000 “Superb. . . . Damrosch’s outstanding book has raised Swift’s provocative genius to life.”—Jeffrey Collins, Wall Street Journal Jonathan Swift is best remembered today as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, the satiric fantasy that quickly became a classic and has remained in print for nearly three centuries. Yet Swift also wrote many other influential works, was a major political and religious figure in his time, and became a national hero, beloved for his fierce protest against English exploitation of his native Ireland. What is really known today about the enigmatic man behind these accomplishments? Can the facts of his life be separated from the fictions? In this deeply researched biography, Leo Damrosch draws on discoveries
