A Modest Proposal - Forgotten Books Author:Jonathan Oswald Donn Swift A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a satirical pamphlet written and published by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Swift suggests in his essay that the Irish might ease their eco... more »nomic troubles by selling children born into poverty as food for rich gentlemen and ladies. The modern phrase "a modest proposal" derives from the work. (Quote from wikipedia.org)
About the Author
Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745)
Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 - October 19, 1745) was an Anglo-Irish cleric, Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for Tories), and poet, famous for works like Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, The Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift published all of his works under pseudonyms - such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier - or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire; the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
Jonathan Swift was born at No. 7, Hoey's Court, Dublin, and was the second child and only son of Jonathan Swift (a second cousin of John Dryden) and wife Abigail Erick (or Herrick), paternal grandson of Thomas Swift and wife Elizabeth Dryden, daughter of Nicholas Dryden (brother of Sir Erasmus Dryden, 1st Baronet) and wife Mary Emyley. His father was Irish born and his mother was born in England. Swift arrived seven months after his father's untimely death. Most of the facts of Swift's early life are obscure, confused and sometimes c« less