Leo Damrosch is Ernest Bernbaum Research Professor of Literature at Harvard University. He is the author of nine books, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius, a National Book Award Finalist. He lives in Newton, MA.

Selected by New York Times Book Review as a Best Book Since 2000“Damrosch tells this story . . . with great energy and elegantly worn erudition. He restores to Swift the dignity he deserves, reminding us that the really shocking things about him lie not in his life but in his work.”—Fintan O’Toole, New York Review of Books“Superb. . . . Damrosch’s outstanding book has raised Swift’s provocative genius to life. . . . Damrosch has brought [Swift’s] vision into sharp focus and exposed its disquieting relevance.”—Jeffrey Collins, Wall Street Journal“An excellent book. Leo Damrosch . . . writes entertainingly and is comfortable with political and philosophical ideas as well as with literary matters.“—Michael Dirda, Washington Post“Damrosch writes with wit and constructs a compelling portrait of the Irish clergyman, whose satires delighted and scandalized eighteenth-century Britain.”—New Yorker, “Briefly Noted”“Convincing and vivid. . .. Damrosch has . . . let us glimpse the human roots of Swift’s sometimes inhuman irony.”—John Mullan, The Guardian “Convincing and vivid. . . . Damrosch has . . . let us glimpse the human roots of Swift’s sometimes inhuman irony.”—John Mullan, The Guardian“A lively and pleasurable experience: vigorous, compassionate, occasionally pugnacious, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. . . . Damrosch’s book, and the centuries-old voices in it, are alive and talking to us.”—Laura Collins-Hughes, Boston Globe“Damrosch’s approach is forensic. . . . For me the Swift who emerges from these patient investigations is a more rounded personality.”—George Walden, Times (UK)“Damrosch is incisive about Swift’s personality . . . and writes with fine Swiftian clarity, but does not simplify. He acknowledges that, investigating Swift, you run into a revolving door of contradictions. . . . But Damrosch sees him, rightly, not just as a tragic figure but as a fearless thinker whose works are an antidote to optimism’s happy lies.”—John Carey, London Sunday Times“Leo Damrosch has written a conscientious and worthy book, full of meat and handsomely illustrated.”—Paul Johnson, Literary Review“The enigma of Swift’s life and character continues to tease us. This magisterial biography reminded me how much, in his writings, there is to relish – even outside the mainstream of the great, the immortal, works.”—A. N. Wilson, The Tablet“[The] new biography brings the writer, satirist, pamphleteer, Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral and author of Gulliver’s Travels to rich and amusing life.”—The Oldie“Drawing on a wealth of evidence and sources, Leo Damrosch uncovers the driving force behind Swift’s political polemics, his hatred of injustice, his championship of tolerance, his relationships with the women he gave poetic nicknames, and his literary and satirical legacy, in a fascinating and illuminating work.”—Good Book Guide“An oxygenated account that blows fresh air on Swift, the most readable account in recent times.”—Brean Hammond, History TodayA Best Book of 2013, The Daily Beast, literary editor Lucas WittmannReceived an Honorable Mention for the 2013 American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE), in the Biography & Autobiography category.Winner of the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award in the category of BiographyColumbia University 2014 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in the Biography/Autobiography categoryFinalist for the Biographers International Organization 2014 Plutarch Award for Best Biography of the Year, Selected by other biographers“Leo Damrosch conjures up Jonathan Swift with hallucinatory vividness, allowing the contradictions of this baffling, elusive genius full rein. He recovers in rich detail the world in which Gulliver’s Travels and other enduring masterpieces were created. This is a brilliant and humane biography.”—Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern"Thoroughly researched, vividly written and convincingly argued, Leo Damrosch's new biography of Jonathan Swift more than holds its own among such great predecessors as Walter Scott and Irvin Ehrenpreis, and presents a standard that contemporary scholarly prose is rarely capable of matching."—Robert Mahony, The Catholic University of America"Immensely enjoyable and fast-paced."—Louis Menand, author of The Metaphysical Club