Best known as the author of Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift is one of literature's great satirists. Born and educated in Ireland, Swift became a politician and clergyman in England, where he wrote essays, pamphlets, poems, and fiction that addressed the political issues and social conditions of his time. In Gulliver's Travels, he introduced the allegorical settings of Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the island of the Houyhnhnms, as well as the term "yahoos" in a playful, but dark, satirical reflection of humankind. This addition to Bloom's Classic Critical Views includes a chronology, an index, and an introductory essay by Yale University professor Harold Bloom.