Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) somehow managed to balance his role as Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin with being one of the most effective, disgusted and ferocious satirists in the English language. Gulliver's Travels is both a parody of what Swift viewed as the ridiculously contrived exotic travel genre pioneered by writers such as Captain William Dampier and an incomparably vivid and funny narrative that lies at the very heart of early English fiction.
