Born in Dublin, satirist and clergyman Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) maintained his critical view on the British hegemony in Ireland. In his most familiar work of fiction, Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Swift sends protagonist Lemuel Gulliver “into several remote nations of the world,” to find human folly. In his close-to-home “modest proposal” of 1729, however, Swift suggests that the Irish people should eat their own children in order to improve the economy. “A Modest Proposal” was initially published under a pseudonym in order to keep the author of personal harm.