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50 free Jonathan Swift trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Jonathan Swift trivia quiz covers the Anglo-Irish clergyman who became the greatest satirist of the Georgian age. The easy questions are the ones any reader can answer: his most famous book, the tiny island he invented, the essay that suggested eating Irish babies and the cathedral he ran as dean. From there the set moves through the life: a father dead of syphilis before he was born, a wet nurse who carried him off to Cumberland, Kilkenny College and Trinity, the years as Sir William Temple's secretary at Moor Park, the eight-year-old pupil he called Stella, the Ménière's disease that plagued him, and the miserable parish at Kilroot. The harder end is for literature students: the coats of A Tale of a Tub, the Battle of the Books and the Epistles of Phalaris, the Isaac Bickerstaff hoax on almanac-maker John Partridge, the Scriblerus Club, The Conduct of the Allies, Queen Anne's grudge, the name Vanessa coined for Esther Vanhomrigh, William Wood's halfpence and the Drapier's Letters, the lock of hair labelled Only a woman's hair, the fortune left to found a mental hospital, the epitaph Yeats translated and the crater on a moon of Mars. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for Swift and his major works before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Gulliver's Travels, Classic Literature and Irish Writers quizzes next.
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Q 01Under which fictional ship's surgeon's name did Swift publish his 1726 masterpiece?
Lemuel Gulliver
The book was an immediate hit, with three printings in its first year.
Q 02In which year was Swift born, about seven months after his father's death?
1667
He was born on 30 November in Dublin.
Q 03Swift was appointed dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, in which year?
1713
The post earned him the sobriquet Dean Swift.
Q 04What did Swift's 1729 essay A Modest Proposal suggest the Irish poor do to escape poverty?
Sell their children as food to the rich
It is one of the most famous works of Juvenalian satire ever written.
Q 05Swift is credited with inventing which popular woman's name through a poem?
Vanessa
He built it from Van, the start of Esther Vanhomrigh's surname, and Essa, a pet form of Esther.
Q 06What was the fictional island of tiny people that Swift created?
Lilliput
Its people are engaged in petty political disputes.
Q 07Which of Swift's pseudonyms is described as the most recognisable of those he used for his early works?
Isaac Bickerstaff
Scholars think the pseudonyms may have shielded him from persecution.
Q 08Of what disease did Swift's father die?
Syphilis
He claimed to have caught it from dirty sheets while travelling.
Q 09Where did Swift's wet nurse take him at the age of one, keeping him until he was three?
Whitehaven, Cumberland
He said he learned to read the Bible there.
Q 10Which philosopher also attended Kilkenny College, where Swift began school at six?
George Berkeley
Swift arrived not yet knowing his Latin declensions and started in a lower form.
Q 11Swift received his BA from Trinity College Dublin in 1686 by what unusual dispensation?
By special grace
He was an above-average but not exceptional student.
Q 12For which retired English diplomat did Swift work as secretary at Moor Park in Surrey?
Sir William Temple
Temple had arranged the Triple Alliance of 1668.
Q 13What nickname did Swift give the eight-year-old girl he tutored at Moor Park?
Stella
Their close but ambiguous relationship lasted the rest of her life.
Swift's lifelong vertigo and giddiness are retrospectively attributed to which condition?
Q 21Which almanac-maker did Swift, under his best-known pseudonym, predict would die on 29 March 1708?
John Partridge
Partridge's own denials were widely disbelieved.
Q 22Swift formed the core of which literary circle with Alexander Pope, John Gay and John Arbuthnot?
The Scriblerus Club
It was founded in 1713.
Q 23Which Tory periodical did Swift edit after the party came to power in 1710?
The Examiner
His 1711 pamphlet The Conduct of the Allies attacked the Whigs for prolonging the war with France.
Ménière's
The illness first forced him to leave Temple's service for Ireland in 1690.
Q 15From which Oxford college did Swift receive his MA in 1692?
Hart Hall
He then took holy orders in the Church of Ireland.
Q 16Where was Swift's first miserable clerical post, near Carrickfergus, from 1694?
Kilroot
He may have courted Jane Waring, whom he called Varina, while there.
Q 17Roughly how large was Swift's congregation at Laracor, County Meath?
About 15
He had abundant leisure to garden, dig a Dutch-style canal and plant willows.
Q 18In which County Meath town did Swift live after 1700, writing many of his works?
Trim
The town has a street named after him and once held a Swift festival.
Q 19In A Tale of a Tub, three sons each inherit what from their father, never to be altered?
A coat
The sons represent the main threads of Christianity and soon look for loopholes in the will.
Q 20Swift's Battle of the Books defended his patron in a quarrel over which ancient letters' authenticity?
The Epistles of Phalaris
Scholar Richard Bentley had shown the Epistles were a later forgery.
Q 24Swift's 1711 pamphlet The Conduct of the Allies helped pave the way for which peace settlement?
The Treaty of Utrecht
It ended the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713.
Q 25Under what title were Swift's London letters to his former pupil in Ireland published?
A Journal to Stella
They record his years mediating between Bolingbroke and Harley.
Q 26Scholars sum up Swift's allegiances in which phrase, which he himself echoed?
A Whig in state and a Tory in church
He confessed himself a High-Churchman but a lover of liberty.
Q 27Which monarch found Swift's A Tale of a Tub blasphemous and blocked his hopes of an English church post?
Queen Anne
His tactless Windsor Prophecy about her bedchamber ladies did not help.
Q 28Returning to Ireland after the Whigs regained power, Swift said he would live like what?
A rat in a hole
He turned instead to writing in support of Irish causes.
Q 29The Drapier's Letters of 1724 attacked whose patent to mint copper coinage for Ireland?
William Wood
The outcry forced the patent to be rescinded in September 1725.
Q 30What reward did the Irish government offer for the identity of the Drapier?
£300
Nobody turned Swift in, though everyone knew.