A Modest Proposal

Published anonymously in 1729, Jonathan Swift's satirical essay, A Modest Proposal, puts forth the darkly comical idea that the starving poor of Ireland might alleviate their economic condition by selling their children as food for wealthy gentlemen and ladies.
At its core, Swift's Modest Proposal satirizes English exploitation of Ireland in particular and the heartless attitude that rich elites can develop towards the poor in general. Along with Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal is an early English example of the black comedic genre.
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Born in 1667, Jonathan Swift was an Irish writer and cleric, best known for his works Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, and A Journal to Stella, amongst many others. Educated at Trinity College in Dublin, Swift received his Doctor of Divinity in February 1702, and eventually became Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Publishing under the names of Lemeul Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, and M. B. Drapier, Swift was a prolific writer who, in addition to his prose works, composed poetry, essays, and political pamphlets for both the Whigs and the Tories, and is considered to be one of the foremost English-language satirists, mastering both the Horatian and Juvenalian styles. Swift died in 1745, leaving the bulk of his fortune to found St. Patrick's Hospital for Imbeciles, a hospital for the mentally ill, which continues to operate as a psychiatric hospital today.