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Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift".

Swift is remembered for works such as A Tale of a Tub (1704), An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1712), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729). He is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M. B. Drapier—or anonymously. He was a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.

His deadpan, ironic writing style, particularly in A Modest Proposal, has led to such satire being subsequently termed "Swiftian".

Early life
Jonathan Swift was born on 30 November 1667 in Dublin in the Kingdom of Ireland. He was the second child and only son of Jonathan Swift (1640–1667) and his wife Abigail Erick (or Herrick) of Frisby on the Wreake. His father was a native of Goodrich, Herefordshire, but he accompanied his brothers to Ireland to seek their fortunes in law after their Royalist father's estate was brought to ruin during the English Civil War. His maternal grandfather, James Ericke, was the vicar of Thornton in Leicestershire. In 1634 the vicar was convicted of Puritan practices. Sometime thereafter, Ericke and his family, including his young daughter Abigail, fled to Ireland.

Swift's father joined his elder brother, Godwin, in the practice of law in Ireland. He died in Dublin about seven months before his namesake was born. He died of syphilis, which he said he got from dirty sheets when out of town.

His mother returned to England after his birth, leaving him in the care of his uncle Godwin Swift (1628–1695), a close friend and confidant of Sir John Temple, whose son later employed Swift as his secretary.

At the age of one, child Jonathan was taken by his wet nurse to her hometown of Whitehaven, Cumberland, England. He said that there he learned to read the Bible. His nurse returned him to his mother, still in Ireland, when he was three. More background to the Whitehaven connection.

Swift's family had several interesting literary connections. His grandmother Elizabeth (Dryden) Swift was the niece of Sir Erasmus Dryden, grandfather of poet John Dryden. The same grandmother's aunt Katherine (Throckmorton) Dryden was a first cousin of Elizabeth, wife of Sir Walter Raleigh. His great-great-grandmother Margaret (Godwin) Swift was the sister of Francis Godwin, author of The Man in the Moone which influenced parts of Swift's Gulliver's Travels. His uncle Thomas Swift married a daughter of poet and playwright Sir William Davenant, a godson of William Shakespeare.

Swift's benefactor and uncle Godwin Swift took primary responsibility for the young man, sending him with one of his cousins to Kilkenny College (also attended by philosopher George Berkeley). He arrived there at the age of six, where he was expected to have already learned the basic declensions in Latin. He had not and thus began his schooling in a lower form. Swift graduated in 1682, when he was 15. He attended Trinity College Dublin in 1682, financed by Godwin's son Willoughby. The four-year course followed a curriculum largely set in the Middle Ages for the priesthood. The lectures were dominated by Aristotelian logic and philosophy. The basic skill taught to students was debate, and they were expected to be able to argue both sides of any argument or topic. Swift was an above-average student but not exceptional, and received his B.A. in 1686 "by special grace."

Adult life
Swift was studying for his master's degree when political troubles in Ireland surrounding the Glorious Revolution forced him to leave for England in 1688, where his mother helped him get a position as secretary and personal assistant of Sir William Temple at Moor Park, Farnham. Temple was an English diplomat who had arranged the Triple Alliance of 1668. He had retired from public service to his country estate, to tend his gardens and write his memoirs. Gaining his employer's confidence, Swift "was often trusted with matters of great importance". Within three years of their acquaintance, Temple introduced his secretary to William III and sent him to London to urge the King to consent to a bill for triennial Parliaments.

Swift took up his residence at Moor Park where he met Esther Johnson, then eight years old, the daughter of an impoverished widow who acted as companion to Temple's sister Lady Giffard. Swift was her tutor and mentor, giving her the nickname "Stella", and the two maintained a close but ambiguous relationship for the rest of Esther's life.

In 1690, Swift left Temple for Ireland because of his health, but returned to Moor Park the following year. The illness consisted of fits of vertigo or giddiness, now believed to be Ménière's disease, and it continued to plague him throughout his life. During this second stay with Temple, Swift received his M.A. from Hart Hall, Oxford, in 1692. He then left Moor Park, apparently despairing of gaining a better position through Temple's patronage, in order to become an ordained priest in the Established Church of Ireland. He was appointed to the prebend of Kilroot in the Diocese of Connor in 1694, with his parish located at Kilroot, near Carrickfergus in County Antrim.

Swift appears to have been miserable in his new position, being isolated in a small, remote community far from the centres of power and influence. While at Kilroot, however, he may well have become romantically involved with Jane Waring, whom he called "Varina", the sister of an old college friend. A letter from him survives, offering to remain if she would marry him and promising to leave and never return to Ireland if she refused. She presumably refused, because Swift left his post and returned to England and Temple's service at Moor Park in 1696, and he remained there until Temple's death. There he was employed in helping to prepare Temple's memoirs and correspondence for publication. During this time, Swift wrote The Battle of the Books, a satire responding to critics of Temple's Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1690), though Battle was not published until 1704.

Temple died on 27 January 1699. Swift, normally a harsh judge of human nature, said that all that was good and amiable in mankind had died with Temple. He stayed on briefly in England to complete editing Temple's memoirs, and perhaps in the hope that recognition of his work might earn him a suitable position in England. His work made enemies among some of Temple's family and friends, in particular Temple's formidable sister Martha, Lady Giffard, who objected to indiscretions included in the memoirs. Moreover, she noted that Swift had borrowed from her own biography, an accusation that Swift denied. Swift's next move was to approach King William directly, based on his imagined connection through Temple and a belief that he had been promised a position. This failed so miserably that he accepted the lesser post of secretary and chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley, one of the Lords Justice of Ireland. However, when he reached Ireland, he found that the secretaryship had already been given to another. He soon obtained the living of Laracor, Agher, and Rathbeggan, and the prebend of Dunlavin in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.

Swift ministered to a congregation of about 15 at Laracor, which was just over 4+1/2 mi from Summerhill, County Meath, and 20 mi from Dublin. He had abundant leisure for cultivating his garden, making a canal after the Dutch fashion of Moor Park, planting willows, and rebuilding the vicarage. As chaplain to Lord Berkeley, he spent much of his time in Dublin and travelled to London frequently over the next ten years. In 1701, he anonymously published the political pamphlet A Discourse on the Contests and Dissentions in Athens and Rome.

Writer
Swift resided in Trim, County Meath, after 1700. He wrote many of his works during this period. In February 1702, Swift received his Doctor of Divinity degree from Trinity College Dublin. That spring he travelled to England and then returned to Ireland in October, accompanied by Esther Johnson—now 20—and his friend Rebecca Dingley, another member of William Temple's household. There is a great mystery and controversy over Swift's relationship with Esther Johnson, nicknamed "Stella". Many, notably his close friend Thomas Sheridan, believed that they were secretly married in 1716; others, like Swift's housekeeper Mrs Brent and Rebecca Dingley (who lived with Stella all through her years in Ireland), dismissed the story as absurd. Swift certainly did not wish her to marry anyone else: in 1704, when their mutual friend William Tisdall informed Swift that he intended to propose to Stella, Swift wrote to him to dissuade him from the idea. Although the tone of the letter was courteous, Swift privately expressed his disgust for Tisdall as an "interloper", and they were estranged for many years.

During his visits to England in these years, Swift published A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books (1704) and began to gain a reputation as a writer. This led to close, lifelong friendships with Alexander Pope, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot, forming the core of the Martinus Scriblerus Club (founded in 1713).

Swift became increasingly active politically in these years. Swift supported the Glorious Revolution and early in his life belonged to the Whigs. As a member of the Anglican Church, he feared a return of the Catholic monarchy and "Papist" absolutism. From 1707 to 1709 and again in 1710, Swift was in London unsuccessfully urging upon the Whig administration of Lord Godolphin the claims of the Irish clergy to the First-Fruits and Twentieths ("Queen Anne's Bounty"), which brought in about £2,500 a year, already granted to their brethren in England. He found the opposition Tory leadership more sympathetic to his cause, and when they came to power in 1710, he was recruited to support their cause as editor of The Examiner. In 1711, Swift published the political pamphlet The Conduct of the Allies, attacking the Whig government for its inability to end the prolonged war with France. The incoming Tory government conducted secret (and illegal) negotiations with France, resulting in the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) ending the War of the Spanish Succession.

Swift was part of the inner circle of the Tory government, and often acted as mediator between Henry St John (Viscount Bolingbroke), the secretary of state for foreign affairs (1710–15), and Robert Harley (Earl of Oxford), lord treasurer and prime minister (1711–14). Swift recorded his experiences and thoughts during this difficult time in a long series of letters to Esther Johnson, collected and published after his death as A Journal to Stella. The animosity between the two Tory leaders eventually led to the dismissal of Harley in 1714. With the death of Queen Anne and the accession of George I that year, the Whigs returned to power, and the Tory leaders were tried for treason for conducting secret negotiations with France.

Swift has been described by scholars as "a Whig in politics and Tory in religion" and Swift related his own views in similar terms, stating that as "a lover of liberty, I found myself to be what they called a Whig in politics ... But, as to religion, I confessed myself to be an High-Churchman." In his Thoughts on Religion, fearing the intense partisan strife waged over religious belief in seventeenth-century England, Swift wrote that "Every man, as a member of the commonwealth, ought to be content with the possession of his own opinion in private." However, it should be borne in mind that, during Swift's time period, terms like "Whig" and "Tory" both encompassed a wide array of opinions and factions, and neither term aligns with a modern political party or modern political alignments.

Also during these years in London, Swift became acquainted with the Vanhomrigh family (Dutch merchants who had settled in Ireland, then moved to London) and became involved with one of the daughters, Esther. Swift furnished Esther with the nickname "Vanessa" (derived by adding "Essa", a pet form of Esther, to the "Van" of her surname, Vanhomrigh), and she features as one of the main characters in his poem Cadenus and Vanessa. The poem and their correspondence suggest that Esther was infatuated with Swift and that he may have reciprocated her affections, only to regret this and then try to break off the relationship. Esther followed Swift to Ireland in 1714 and settled at her old family home, Celbridge Abbey. Their uneasy relationship continued for some years; then there appears to have been a confrontation, possibly involving Esther Johnson. Esther Vanhomrigh died in 1723 at the age of 35, having destroyed the will she had made in Swift's favour. Another lady with whom he had a close but less intense relationship was Anne Long, a toast of the Kit-Cat Club.

Final years
Before the fall of the Tory government, Swift hoped that his services would be rewarded with a church appointment in England. However, Queen Anne appeared to have taken a dislike to Swift and thwarted these efforts. Her dislike has been attributed to A Tale of a Tub, which she thought blasphemous, compounded by The Windsor Prophecy, where Swift, with a surprising lack of tact, advised the Queen on which of her bedchamber ladies she should and should not trust. The best position his friends could secure for him was the Deanery of St Patrick's; this was not in the Queen's gift, and Anne, who could be a bitter enemy, made it clear that Swift would not have received the preferment if she could have prevented it. With the return of the Whigs, Swift's best move was to leave England and he returned to Ireland in disappointment, a virtual exile, to live "like a rat in a hole".

Once in Ireland, however, Swift began to turn his pamphleteering skills in support of Irish causes, producing some of his most memorable works: Proposal for Universal Use of Irish Manufacture (1720), Drapier's Letters (1724), and A Modest Proposal (1729), earning him the status of an Irish patriot. This new role was unwelcome to the Government, which made clumsy attempts to silence him. His printer, Edward Waters, was convicted of seditious libel in 1720, but four years later a grand jury refused to find that the Drapier's Letters (which, though written under a pseudonym, were universally known to be Swift's work) were seditious. Swift responded with an attack on the Irish judiciary almost unparalleled in its ferocity, his principal target being the "vile and profligate villain" William Whitshed, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.

Also during these years, he began writing his masterpiece, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships, better known as Gulliver's Travels. Much of the material reflects his political experiences of the preceding decade. For instance, the episode in which the giant Gulliver puts out the Lilliputian palace fire by urinating on it can be seen as a metaphor for the Tories' illegal peace treaty; having done a good thing in an unfortunate manner. In 1726 he paid a long-deferred visit to London, taking with him the manuscript of Gulliver's Travels. During his visit, he stayed with his old friends Alexander Pope, John Arbuthnot and John Gay, who helped him arrange for the anonymous publication of his book. First published in November 1726, it was an immediate hit, with a total of three printings that year and another in early 1727. French, German, and Dutch translations appeared in 1727, and pirated copies were printed in Ireland.

Swift returned to England one more time in 1727, and stayed once again with Alexander Pope. The visit was cut short when Swift received word that Esther Johnson was dying, and rushed back home to be with her. On 28 January 1728, Johnson died; Swift had prayed at her bedside, even composing prayers for her comfort. Swift could not bear to be present at the end, but on the night of her death he began to write his The Death of Mrs Johnson. He was too ill to attend the funeral at St Patrick's. Many years later, a lock of hair, assumed to be Johnson's, was found in his desk, wrapped in a paper bearing the words, "Only a woman's hair".

Death
Death became a frequent feature of Swift's life from this point. In 1731 he wrote Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, his own obituary, published in 1739. In 1732, his good friend and collaborator John Gay died. In 1735, John Arbuthnot, another friend from his days in London, died. In 1738 Swift began to show signs of illness, and in 1742 he may have suffered a stroke, losing the ability to speak and realising his worst fears of becoming mentally disabled. ("I shall be like that tree", he once said, "I shall die at the top.") He became increasingly quarrelsome, and long-standing friendships, like that with Thomas Sheridan, ended without sufficient cause. To protect him from unscrupulous hangers-ons, who had begun to prey on the great man, his closest companions had him declared of "unsound mind and memory". However, it was long believed by many that Swift was actually insane at this point. In his book Literature and Western Man, author J. B. Priestley even cites the final chapters of Gulliver's Travels as proof of Swift's approaching "insanity". Bewley attributes his decline to 'terminal dementia'.

In part VIII of his series, The Story of Civilization, Will Durant describes the final years of Swift's life as such:

"'Definite symptoms of madness appeared in 1738. In 1741, guardians were appointed to take care of his affairs and watch lest in his outbursts of violence, he should do himself harm. In 1742, he suffered great pain from the inflammation of his left eye, which swelled to the size of an egg; five attendants had to restrain him from tearing out his eye. He went a whole year without uttering a word.'"

In 1744, Alexander Pope died. Then on 19 October 1745, Swift, at nearly 78, died. After being laid out in public view for the people of Dublin to pay their last respects, he was buried in his own cathedral by Esther Johnson's side, in accordance with his wishes. The bulk of his fortune (£12,000) was left to found a hospital for the mentally ill, originally known as St Patrick's Hospital for Imbeciles, which opened in 1757, and which still exists as a psychiatric hospital.

 * (Text extracted from the introduction to The Journal to Stella by George A. Aitken and from other sources).

Jonathan Swift wrote his own epitaph:

W. B. Yeats poetically translated it from the Latin as:

 * Swift has sailed into his rest;
 * Savage indignation there
 * Cannot lacerate his breast.
 * Imitate him if you dare,
 * World-besotted traveller; he
 * Served human liberty.

Swift, Stella and Vanessa – an alternative view
British politician Michael Foot was a great admirer of Swift and wrote about him extensively. In Debts of Honour he cites with approbation a theory propounded by Denis Johnston that offers an explanation of Swift's behaviour towards Stella and Vanessa. Pointing to contradictions in the received information about Swift's origins and parentage, Johnston postulates that Swift's real father was Sir William Temple's father, Sir John Temple who was Master of the Rolls in Dublin at the time. It is widely thought that Stella was Sir William Temple's illegitimate daughter. So Swift was Sir William's brother and Stella's uncle. Marriage or close relations between Swift and Stella would therefore have been incest, an unthinkable prospect.

It follows that Swift could not have married Vanessa either without Stella appearing to be a cast-off mistress, which he would not contemplate. Johnston's theory is expounded fully in his book In Search of Swift. He is also cited in the Dictionary of Irish Biography and the theory is presented without attribution in the Concise Cambridge History of English Literature.

Works
Swift was a prolific writer. The collection of his prose works (Herbert Davis, ed. Basil Blackwell, 1965–) comprises fourteen volumes. A 1983 edition of his complete poetry (Pat Rodges, ed. Penguin, 1983) is 953 pages long. One edition of his correspondence (David Woolley, ed. P. Lang, 1999) fills three volumes.

Major prose works

Swift's first major prose work, A Tale of a Tub, demonstrates many of the themes and stylistic techniques he would employ in his later work. It is at once wildly playful and funny while being pointed and harshly critical of its targets. In its main thread, the Tale recounts the exploits of three sons, representing the main threads of Christianity, who receive a bequest from their father of a coat each, with the added instructions to make no alterations whatsoever. However, the sons soon find that their coats have fallen out of current fashion, and begin to look for loopholes in their father's will that will let them make the needed alterations. As each finds his own means of getting around their father's admonition, they struggle with each other for power and dominance. Inserted into this story, in alternating chapters, the narrator includes a series of whimsical "digressions" on various subjects.

In 1690, Sir William Temple, Swift's patron, published An Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning a defence of classical writing (see Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns), holding up the Epistles of Phalaris as an example. William Wotton responded to Temple with Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (1694), showing that the Epistles were a later forgery. A response by the supporters of the Ancients was then made by Charles Boyle (later the 4th Earl of Orrery and father of Swift's first biographer). A further retort on the Modern side came from Richard Bentley, one of the pre-eminent scholars of the day, in his essay Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris (1699). The final words on the topic belong to Swift in his Battle of the Books (1697, published 1704) in which he makes a humorous defence on behalf of Temple and the cause of the Ancients.

In 1708, a cobbler named John Partridge published a popular almanac of astrological predictions. Because Partridge falsely determined the deaths of several church officials, Swift attacked Partridge in Predictions for the Ensuing Year by Isaac Bickerstaff, a parody predicting that Partridge would die on 29 March. Swift followed up with a pamphlet issued on 30 March claiming that Partridge had in fact died, which was widely believed despite Partridge's statements to the contrary. According to other sources, Richard Steele used the persona of Isaac Bickerstaff, and was the one who wrote about the "death" of John Partridge and published it in The Spectator, not Jonathan Swift.

The Drapier's Letters (1724) was a series of pamphlets against the monopoly granted by the English government to William Wood to mint copper coinage for Ireland. It was widely believed that Wood would need to flood Ireland with debased coinage in order to make a profit. In these "letters" Swift posed as a shopkeeper—a draper—to criticise the plan. Swift's writing was so effective in undermining opinion in the project that a reward was offered by the government to anyone disclosing the true identity of the author. Though hardly a secret (on returning to Dublin after one of his trips to England, Swift was greeted with a banner, "Welcome Home, Drapier") no one turned Swift in, although there was an unsuccessful attempt to prosecute the publisher John Harding. Thanks to the general outcry against the coinage, Wood's patent was rescinded in September 1725 and the coins were kept out of circulation. In "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift" (1739) Swift recalled this as one of his best achievements.

Gulliver's Travels, a large portion of which Swift wrote at Woodbrook House in County Laois, was published in 1726. It is regarded as his masterpiece. As with his other writings, the Travels was published under a pseudonym, the fictional Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon and later a sea captain. Some of the correspondence between printer Benj. Motte and Gulliver's also-fictional cousin negotiating the book's publication has survived. Though it has often been mistakenly thought of and published in bowdlerised form as a children's book, it is a great and sophisticated satire of human nature based on Swift's experience of his times. Gulliver's Travels is an anatomy of human nature, a sardonic looking-glass, often criticised for its apparent misanthropy. It asks its readers to refute it, to deny that it has adequately characterised human nature and society. Each of the four books—recounting four voyages to mostly fictional exotic lands—has a different theme, but all are attempts to deflate human pride. Critics hail the work as a satiric reflection on the shortcomings of Enlightenment thought.

In 1729, Swift's A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick was published in Dublin by Sarah Harding. It is a satire in which the narrator, with intentionally grotesque arguments, recommends that Ireland's poor escape their poverty by selling their children as food to the rich: "I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food ..." Following the satirical form, he introduces the reforms he is actually suggesting by deriding them: Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients ... taxing our absentees ... using [nothing] except what is of our own growth and manufacture ... rejecting ... foreign luxury ... introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance ... learning to love our country ... quitting our animosities and factions ... teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants. ... Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like expedients, till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice.

Essays, tracts, pamphlets, periodicals

 * "A Meditation upon a Broom-stick" (1703–10)
 * "A Tritical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind" (1707–11)
 * The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers (1708–09)
 * "An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity" (1708–11): Full text
 * The Intelligencer (with Thomas Sheridan (1719–1788)): Text: Project Gutenberg
 * The Examiner (1710): Texts: Project Gutenberg
 * "A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue" (1712)
 * "On the Conduct of the Allies" (1711)
 * "Hints Toward an Essay on Conversation" (1713): Full text: Bartleby.com
 * "The Publick Spirit of the Whigs, set forth in their generous encouragement of the author of the crisis" (1714)
 * "A Letter to a Young Gentleman, Lately Entered into Holy Orders" (1720)
 * "A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet" (1721): Full text: Bartleby.com
 * Drapier's Letters (1724, 1725): Full text: Project Gutenberg
 * "Bon Mots de Stella" (1726): a curiously irrelevant appendix to "Gulliver's Travels"
 * "A Modest Proposal", perhaps the most notable satire in English, suggesting that the Irish should engage in cannibalism. (Written in 1729)
 * "An Essay on the Fates of Clergymen"
 * "A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding": Full text: Bartleby.com
 * "A modest address to the wicked authors of the present age. Particularly the authors of Christianity not founded on argument, and of The resurrection of Jesus considered" (1743–45?)

Poems

 * "Ode to the Athenian Society", Swift's first publication, printed in The Athenian Mercury in the supplement of Feb 14, 1691.
 * Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Texts at Project Gutenberg: Volume One, Volume Two
 * "Baucis and Philemon" (1706–09): Full text: Munseys
 * "A Description of the Morning" (1709): Full annotated text: U of Toronto; Another text: U of Virginia
 * "A Description of a City Shower" (1710): Full text: Poetry Foundation
 * "Cadenus and Vanessa" (1713): Full text: Munseys
 * "Phillis, or, the Progress of Love" (1719): Full text: theotherpages.org
 * Stella's birthday poems:
 * 1719. Full annotated text: U of Toronto
 * 1720. Full text
 * 1727. Full text: U of Toronto
 * "The Progress of Beauty" (1719–20): Full text: OurCivilisation.com
 * "The Progress of Poetry" (1720): Full text: theotherpages.org
 * "A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General" (1722): Full text: U of Toronto
 * "To Quilca, a Country House not in Good Repair" (1725): Full text: U of Toronto
 * "Advice to the Grub Street Verse-writers" (1726): Full text: U of Toronto
 * "The Furniture of a Woman's Mind" (1727)
 * "On a Very Old Glass" (1728): Full text: Gosford.co.uk
 * "A Pastoral Dialogue" (1729): Full text: Gosford.co.uk
 * "The Grand Question debated Whether Hamilton's Bawn should be turned into a Barrack or a Malt House" (1729): Full text: Gosford.co.uk
 * "On Stephen Duck, the Thresher and Favourite Poet" (1730): Full text: U of Toronto
 * "Death and Daphne" (1730): Full text: OurCivilisation.com
 * "The Place of the Damn'd" (1731):
 * "A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed" (1731): Full annotated text: Jack Lynch; Another text: U of Virginia
 * "Strephon and Chloe" (1731): Full annotated text: Jack Lynch; Another text: U of Virginia
 * "Helter Skelter" (1731): Full text: OurCivilisation.com
 * "Cassinus and Peter: A Tragical Elegy" (1731): Full annotated text: Jack Lynch
 * "The Day of Judgment" (1731): Full text
 * "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D." (1731–32): Full annotated texts: Jack Lynch, U of Toronto; Non-annotated text:: U of Virginia
 * "An Epistle to a Lady" (1732): Full text: OurCivilisation.com
 * "The Beasts' Confession to the Priest" (1732): Full annotated text: U of Toronto
 * "The Lady's Dressing Room" (1732): Full annotated text: Jack Lynch
 * "On Poetry: A Rhapsody" (1733)
 * "The Puppet Show"
 * "The Logicians Refuted"

Correspondence, personal writings

 * "When I Come to Be Old" – Swift's resolutions. (1699)
 * A Journal to Stella (1710–13): Full text (presented as daily entries): The Journal to Stella; Extracts: OurCivilisation.com;
 * Letters:
 * Selected Letters
 * To Oxford and Pope: OurCivilisation.com
 * The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Edited by David Woolley. In four volumes, plus index volume. Frankfurt am Main; New York : P. Lang, c. 1999.

Sermons, prayers

 * Three Sermons and Three Prayers. Full text: U of Adelaide, Project Gutenberg
 * Three Sermons: I. on mutual subjection. II. on conscience. III. on the Trinity. Text: Project Gutenberg
 * Writings on Religion and the Church. Text at Project Gutenberg: Volume One, Volume Two
 * "The First He Wrote Oct. 17, 1727." Full text: Worldwideschool.org
 * "The Second Prayer Was Written Nov. 6, 1727." Full text: Worldwideschool.org

Miscellany

 * Directions to Servants (1731): Full text: Jonathon Swift Archive
 * A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation (1738)
 * "Thoughts on Various Subjects." Full text: U of Adelaide
 * Historical Writings: Project Gutenberg
 * Swift quotes at Bartleby: Bartleby.com – 59 quotations, with notes
 * The Benefit of Farting Explained, published under the pseudonym Don Fartinando Puff-Indorst, Professor of Bumbast in the University of Crackow.

Literary
John Ruskin named him as one of the three people in history who were the most influential for him. George Orwell named him as one of the writers he most admired, despite disagreeing with him on almost every moral and political issue. Modernist poet Edith Sitwell wrote a fictional biography of Swift, titled I Live Under a Black Sun and published in 1937. A. L. Rowse wrote a biography of Swift, essays on his works, and edited the Pan Books edition of Gulliver's Travels.

Literary scholar Frank Stier Goodwin wrote a full biography of Swift: Jonathan Swift – Giant in Chains, issued by Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York (1940, 450pp, with Bibliography).

In 1982, Soviet playwright Grigory Gorin wrote a theatrical fantasy called The House That Swift Built based on the last years of Jonathan Swift's life and episodes of his works. The play was filmed by director Mark Zakharov in the 1984 two-part television movie of the same name. Jake Arnott features him in his 2017 novel The Fatal Tree. A 2017 analysis of library holdings data revealed that Swift is the most popular Irish author, and that Gulliver’s Travels is the most widely held work of Irish literature in libraries globally.

The first woman to write a biography of Swift was Sophie Shilleto Smith, who published Dean Swift in 1910.

Eponymous places
Swift crater, a crater on Mars's moon Deimos, is named after Jonathan Swift, who predicted the existence of the moons of Mars.

In honour of Swift's long-time residence in Trim, there are several monuments in the town marking his legacy. Most notable is Swift's Street, named after him. Trim also holds a recurring festival in honour of Swift, called the Trim Swift Festival. In 2020, the festival was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and has not been held since.

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title: Jonathan Swift


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Jello Biafra

Eric Reed Boucher (born June 17, 1958), known professionally as Jello Biafra, is an American singer, spoken word artist and political activist. He is the former lead singer and songwriter for the San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys.

Initially active from 1979 to 1986, Dead Kennedys were known for rapid-fire music topped with Biafra's sardonic lyrics and biting social commentary, delivered in his "unique quiver of a voice". When the band broke up in 1986, he took over the influential independent record label Alternative Tentacles, which he had founded in 1979 with Dead Kennedys bandmate East Bay Ray. In a 2000 lawsuit, upheld on appeal in 2003 by the California Supreme Court, Biafra was found liable for breach of contract, fraud, and malice in withholding a decade's worth of royalties from his former bandmates and ordered to pay over $200,000 in compensation and punitive damages; the band subsequently reformed without Biafra. Although now focused primarily on spoken word performances, Biafra has continued as a musician in numerous collaborations. He has also occasionally appeared in cameo roles in films.

Politically, Biafra is a member of the Green Party of the United States and supports various political causes. He ran for the party's presidential nomination in the 2000 presidential election, finishing a distant second to Ralph Nader. In 1979 he ran for mayor of San Francisco, California. He is a supporter of a free society and utilizes shock value and advocates direct action and pranksterism in the name of political causes. Biafra uses absurdist media tactics, in the leftist tradition of the Yippies, to highlight issues of civil rights and social justice.

Early life
Eric Reed Boucher was born in Boulder, Colorado, the son of Virginia Boucher (née Parker), a librarian, and Stanley Wayne Boucher, a psychiatric social worker and poet. His sister, Julie J. Boucher, was Associate Director of the Library Research Service at the Colorado State Library; she died in a mountain-climbing accident on October 12, 1996. He has a Jewish great-grandparent, but was unaware of this until he was in his mid-40s. Due to his secular upbringing and lack of knowledge of his distant Jewish ancestry until adulthood, he does not consider himself Jewish.

As a child, Boucher developed an interest in international politics that was encouraged by his parents. An avid news watcher, one of his earliest memories was of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Boucher became a fan of rock music after first hearing it in 1965 when his parents accidentally tuned in to a rock radio station. As a teenager, his high school guidance counselor advised him to spend his adolescence preparing to become a dental hygienist.

Colorado bands
In 1977, he worked as a roadie for a local band called The Ravers (who later changed their name to The Nails), helping set up their equipment at shows, including as an opener for the Ramones. The job ended shortly after the Ramones show, when The Ravers were offered a record contract and left Colorado. Boucher credits seeing Joey Ramone as inspiration to become a singer, and the Ramones lyrics for inspiring the use of humor in his own songs.

Shortly after graduating high school, he formed a band called The Healers, with John Greenway and an unknown third member. Boucher has described The Healers' music as "banging on instruments we didn't know how to play when our parents weren't home". While never playing a show, the band made recordings, including an early version of "California Über Alles", but did not want any of it to be released to the public. Some of their music was made available on a 2009 compilation of late 1970s Colorado punk bands titled Rocky Mountain Low, including the original version of "California Über Alles", which Maximum Rocknroll described as experimental improv in their review.

Boucher left Boulder to attend the University of California, Santa Cruz but dropped out after the first quarter of the school year.

Dead Kennedys
In June 1978, Boucher responded to an advertisement placed in a store by guitarist East Bay Ray, stating "guitarist wants to form punk band", and together they formed the Dead Kennedys. He began performing with the band under the stage name Occupant, but soon began to use the stage name Jello Biafra, a combination of the brand name Jell-O and the short-lived African state of Biafra.

Biafra initially attempted to compose music on guitar, but his lack of experience on the instrument and his own admission of being "a fumbler with my hands" led Dead Kennedys bassist Klaus Flouride to suggest that Biafra simply sing the parts he envisioned to the band. Biafra sang his riffs and melodies into a tape recorder, which he brought to the band's rehearsal and/or recording sessions. This later became a problem when the other members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra over royalties and publishing rights. By all accounts, including his own, Biafra is not a conventionally skilled musician, though he and his collaborators (Joey Shithead of D.O.A. in particular) attest that he is a skilled composer and his work, particularly with the Dead Kennedys, is highly respected by punk-oriented critics and fans.

The first single by Dead Kennedys was their version of "California Über Alles". The song, which spoofed California governor Jerry Brown, was the first of many political songs by the group and Biafra. Its popularity resulted in being covered by other musicians, such as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (who rewrote the lyrics to parody Pete Wilson), John Linnell of They Might Be Giants and Six Feet Under on their Graveyard Classics album of cover versions. Not long after, the Dead Kennedys had a second and bigger hit with "Holiday in Cambodia" from their debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables. AllMusic cites this song as "possibly the most successful single of the American hardcore scene" and Biafra counts it as his personal favorite Dead Kennedy's song.

The Dead Kennedys received some controversy in the spring of 1981 over the single "Too Drunk to Fuck". The song became a hit in Britain, and the BBC feared that it would manage to be a big enough hit to appear among the top 30 songs on the national charts, requiring a mention on Top of the Pops. However, the single peaked at number 31 in the charts.

The EP In God We Trust, Inc. contained the song "Nazi Punks Fuck Off!" as well as "We've Got A Bigger Problem Now", a rewritten version of "California über alles" about Ronald Reagan. Punk musician and scholar Vic Bondi considers the latter song to be the song that "defined the lyrical agenda of much of hardcore music, and represented its break with punk". The band's most controversial album, Frankenchrist, brought with it the song "MTV Get Off the Air," which accused MTV of promoting poor quality music and sedating the public. The album also contained a controversial poster by Swiss surrealist artist H. R. Giger entitled Penis Landscape.

The Dead Kennedys toured widely during their career, starting in the late 1970s. They began playing at San Francisco's Mabuhay Gardens (their home base) and other Bay Area venues, later branching out to shows in southern Californian clubs (most notably the Whisky a Go Go), but eventually they moved to major clubs across the country, including CBGB in New York. Later, they played to larger audiences such as at the 1980 Bay Area Music Awards (where they played the notorious "Pull My Strings" for the only time), and headlined the 1983 Rock Against Reagan festival.

On May 7, 1994, punk rock fans who believed Biafra was a "sell out" attacked him at the 924 Gilman Street club in Berkeley, California. Biafra claims that he was attacked by a man nicknamed Cretin, who crashed into him while moshing. The crash injured Biafra's leg, causing an argument between the two men. During the argument, Cretin pushed Biafra to the floor and five or six friends of Cretin assaulted Biafra while he was down, yelling "Sellout rock star, kick him", and attempting to pull out his hair. Biafra was later hospitalized with serious injuries. The attack derailed Biafra's plans for both a Canadian spoken-word tour and an accompanying album, and the production of Pure Chewing Satisfaction was halted. However, Biafra returned to the Gilman club a few months after the incident to perform a spoken-word performance as an act of reconciliation with the club.

Biafra has been a prominent figure in the Californian punk scene and was one of the third-generation members of the San Francisco punk community. Many later hardcore bands have cited the Dead Kennedys as a major influence. Hardcore punk author Steven Blush describes Biafra as hardcore's "biggest star" who was a "powerful presence whose political insurgence and rabid fandom made him the father figure of a burgeoning subculture [and an] inspirational force [who] could also be a real prick ... Biafra was a visionary, incendiary [performer]."

After the Dead Kennedys disbanded, Biafra's new songs were recorded with other bands, and he released only spoken word albums as solo projects. These collaborations had less popularity than Biafra's earlier work. However, his song "That's Progress", originally recorded with D.O.A. for the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors, received considerable exposure when it appeared on the album Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1.

Obscenity prosecution
In April 1986, police officers raided Biafra's house in response to complaints by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). In June 1986, L.A. deputy city attorney Michael Guarino, working under City Attorney James Hahn, brought Biafra to trial in Los Angeles for distributing "harmful material to minors" in the Dead Kennedys album Frankenchrist. However, the dispute was about neither the music nor the lyrics from the album, but rather the print of the H. R. Giger poster Landscape XX (Penis Landscape) included with the album.

Music author Reebee Garofalo argued that Biafra and Alternative Tentacles may have been targeted because the label was a "small, self-managed and self-supported company that could ill afford a protracted legal battle." Facing the possible sentence of a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, Biafra, Dirk Dirksen, and Suzanne Stefanac founded the No More Censorship Defense Fund, a benefit featuring several punk rock bands, to help pay for his legal fees, which neither he nor his record label could afford. The jury deadlocked 5 to 7 in favor of acquittal, prompting a mistrial; despite a motion to retry the case, the judge ordered all charges dropped. The Dead Kennedys disbanded during the trial, in December 1986, due to the mounting legal costs; in the wake of their disbandment, Biafra made a career of his spoken word performances.

Biafra has a cameo role in the 1988 film Tapeheads. He plays an FBI agent who arrests the two protagonists (played by Tim Robbins and John Cusack). While arresting them his character asks "Remember what we did to Jello Biafra?" lampooning the obscenity prosecution.

On March 25, 2005, Biafra appeared on the U.S. radio program This American Life, "Episode 285: Know Your Enemy", which featured a phone call between Jello Biafra and Michael Guarino, the prosecutor in the Frankenchrist trial.

Lawsuit and reunion activities
In October 1998, three former members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra for nonpayment of royalties. The other members of Dead Kennedys alleged that Biafra, in his capacity as the head of Alternative Tentacles records, discovered an accounting error amounting to some $75,000 in unpaid royalties over almost a decade. Rather than informing his bandmates of this mistake, the suit alleged, Biafra knowingly concealed the information until a whistleblower employee at the record label notified the band.

According to Biafra, the suit resulted from his refusal to allow one of the band's most well-known singles, "Holiday in Cambodia", to be used in a commercial for Levi's Dockers; Biafra opposes Levi's because of his belief that they use unfair business practices and sweatshop labor. Biafra maintained that he had never denied them royalties and that he himself had not even received royalties for re-releases of their albums or "posthumous" live albums which had been licensed to other labels by the Decay Music partnership. Decay Music denied this charge and have posted what they say are his cashed royalty checks, written to his legal name of Eric Boucher. Biafra also complained about the songwriting credits in new reissues and archival live albums of songs, alleging that he was the sole composer of songs that were wrongly credited to the entire band.

In May 2000, a jury found Biafra and Alternative Tentacles liable by not promptly informing his former bandmates of the accounting error and instead withholding the information during subsequent discussions and contractual negotiations. Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages. After an appeal by Biafra's lawyers, in June 2003, the California Court of Appeals unanimously upheld all the conditions of the 2000 verdict against Biafra and Alternative Tentacles. Furthermore, the plaintiffs were awarded the rights to most of Dead Kennedys recorded works—which accounted for about half the sales for Alternative Tentacles. Now in control of the Dead Kennedys name, Biafra's former bandmates went on tour with a new lead vocalist.

Other bands
In the early 1980s, Biafra collaborated with musicians Christian Lunch and Adrian Borland (of The Sound) and Morgan Fisher (of Mott the Hoople) for the electropunk musical project The Witch Trials, releasing one self-titled EP in its lifetime.

In 1988, Biafra, with Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker of the band Ministry, and Jeff Ward, formed Lard. The band became yet another side project for Ministry, with Biafra providing vocals and lyrics. According to a March 2009 interview with Jourgensen, he and Biafra are working on a new Lard album, which is being recorded in Jourgensen's El Paso studio. Jourgensen also claimed in 2021 that Biafra was in the works on a new Lard album. While working on the film Terminal City Ricochet in 1989, Biafra did a song for the film's soundtrack with D.O.A.. As a result, Biafra worked with D.O.A. on the album Last Scream of the Missing Neighbors. Biafra also worked with Nomeansno on the soundtrack, which led to their collaboration on the album The Sky Is Falling and I Want My Mommy the following year. Biafra also provided lyrics for the song "Biotech is Godzilla" for Sepultura's 1993 album Chaos A.D..

In 1999, Biafra and other members of the anti-globalization movement protested the WTO Meeting of 1999 in Seattle. Along with other prominent West Coast musicians, he formed the short-lived band No WTO Combo to help promote the movement's cause. The band was originally scheduled to play during the protest, but the performance was canceled due to riots. The band performed a short set the following night at the Showbox in downtown Seattle (outside the designated area), along with the hip-hop group Spearhead. No WTO Combo later released a CD of recordings from the concert, entitled Live from the Battle in Seattle.

As of late 2005, Biafra was performing with the band The Melvins under the name "Jello Biafra and the Melvins", though fans sometimes refer to them as "The Jelvins". Together they have released two albums, and worked on material for a third collaborative release, much of which was premiered live at two concerts at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco during an event called Biafra Five-O, commemorating Biafra's 50th birthday, the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Dead Kennedys, and the beginning of legalized same-sex marriage in California. Biafra was also working with a band known as Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, which included Ralph Spight of Victims Family on guitar and Billy Gould of Faith No More on bass. This group debuted during Biafra Five-O.

In 2011, Biafra appeared in a singular concert event with an all-star cast of Southern musicians including members from Cowboy Mouth, Dash Rip Rock, Mojo Nixon, and Down entitled, "Jello Biafra and the New Orleans Raunch & Soul All Stars" who performed an array of classic Soul covers to a packed house at the 12-Bar in New Orleans, Louisiana. He would later reunite with many of the same musicians during the Carnival season 2014 to revisit many of these classics in Siberia, New Orleans. A live album from the 2011 performance, Walk on Jindal's Splinters, and a companion single, Fannie May/Just a Little Bit, were released in 2015.

Alternative Tentacles
In June 1979, Biafra co-founded the record label Alternative Tentacles, with which the Dead Kennedys released their first single, "California über alles". The label was created to allow the band to release albums without having to deal with pressure from major labels to change their music, although the major labels were not willing to sign the band due to their songs being deemed too controversial. After dealing with Cherry Red in the UK and IRS Records in the US for their first album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, the band released all later albums, and later pressings of Fresh Fruit on Alternative Tentacles. The exception was live albums released after the band's break-up, which the other band members compiled from recordings in the band partnership's vaults without Biafra's input or endorsement.. Biafra has been the owner of the company since its founding, though he does not receive a salary for his position; Biafra has referred to his position in the company as "absentee thoughtlord".

Biafra is an collector of unusual vinyl records of all kinds, from 1950s and 1960s ethno-pop recordings by the likes of Les Baxter and Esquivel to vanity pressings that have circulated regionally, to German crooner Heino (for whom he would later participate in the documentary Heino: Made In Germany); he cites his always growing collection as one of his biggest musical influences. In 1993 he gave an interview to RE/Search Publications for their second Incredibly Strange Music book focusing primarily on these records, and later participated in a two-part episode of Fuse TV's program Crate Diggers on the same subject. His interest in such recordings, often categorized as outsider music, led to his discovery of the prolific (and schizophrenic) singer/songwriter/artist Wesley Willis, whom he signed to Alternative Tentacles in 1994, preceding Willis' major label deal with American Recordings. His collection grew so large that on October 1, 2005, Biafra donated a portion of his collection to an annual yard sale co-promoted by Alternative Tentacles and held at their warehouse in Emeryville, California.

In 2006, along with Alternative Tentacles employee and The Frisk lead singer Jesse Luscious, Biafra began co-hosting The Alternative Tentacles Batcast, a downloadable podcast hosted by alternativetentacles.com. The show primarily focuses on interviews with artists and bands that are currently signed to the Alternative Tentacles label, although there are also occasional episodes where Biafra devoted the show to answering fan questions.

Spoken word

Biafra became a spoken word artist in January 1986 with a performance at University of California, Los Angeles. In his performance, he combined humor with his political beliefs, much in the same way that he did with the lyrics to his songs. Despite his continued spoken word performances, he did not begin recording spoken word albums until after the disbanding of the Dead Kennedys.

His ninth spoken word album, In the Grip of Official Treason, was released in October 2006.

Biafra was also featured in the British band Pitchshifter's song As Seen on TV reciting the words of dystopian futuristic radio advertisements.

Politics
Biafra has resisted identifying with any particular ideology, saying, "I don't label myself strictly an anarchist or a socialist or let alone a libertarian or something like that," In a 2012 interview, Biafra said "I'm very pro-tax as long as it goes for the right things. I don't mind paying more money as long as it's going to provide shelter for people sleeping in the street or getting the schools fixed back up, getting the infrastructure up to the standards of other countries, including a high-speed rail system. I'm totally down with that." Music critic Anthony Fantano credits Biafra as his "political idol".

Mayoral campaign
In the autumn of 1979, Biafra ran for mayor of San Francisco, using the Jell-O ad campaign catchphrase, "There's always room for Jello", as his campaign slogan. Having entered the race before creating a campaign platform, Biafra later wrote his platform on a napkin while attending a Pere Ubu concert where Dead Kennedys drummer Ted told Biafra, "Biafra, you have such a big mouth that you should run for Mayor." As he campaigned, Biafra wore campaign T-shirts from his opponent Quentin Kopp's previous campaign and at one point vacuumed leaves off the front lawn of another opponent, Dianne Feinstein, to mock her publicity stunt of sweeping streets in downtown San Francisco for a few hours. He also made a whistlestop campaign tour along the BART line. Supporters committed equally odd actions; two well-known signs held by supporters said "If he doesn't win I'll kill myself" and "What if he does win?"

At the time, in San Francisco, any individual could legally run for mayor if a petition was signed by 1500 people or if $1500 was paid. Biafra paid $900 and got signatures over time and eventually became a legal candidate, meaning he received statements put in voters' pamphlets and equal news coverage.

His platform included unconventional points such as forcing businessmen to wear clown suits within city limits, erecting statues of Dan White, who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978, around the city and allowing the parks department to sell eggs and tomatoes with which people could pelt the statues, hiring workers who had lost their jobs due to a tax initiative to panhandle in wealthy neighborhoods (including Feinstein's), and a citywide ban on cars. Biafra has expressed irritation that these parts of his platform attained such notoriety, preferring instead to be remembered for serious proposals such as legalizing squatting in vacant, tax-delinquent buildings and requiring police officers to run for election by the people of the neighborhoods they patrol.

He finished fourth out of a field of ten, receiving 3.79 percent of the vote (6,591 votes); the election ended in a runoff that did not involve him (Feinstein was declared the winner).

Presidential campaign
In 2000, the New York State Green Party drafted Biafra as a candidate for the Green Party presidential nomination, and a few supporters were elected to the party's nominating convention in Denver, Colorado. Biafra chose death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal as his running mate. The party overwhelmingly chose Ralph Nader as the presidential candidate with 295 of the 319 delegate votes. Biafra received 10 votes.

Biafra, along with a camera crew (dubbed by Biafra as "The Camcorder Truth Jihad"), later reported for the Independent Media Center at the Republican and Democratic conventions.

Post-2000
After losing the 2000 nomination, Biafra became highly active in Nader's presidential campaign, as well as in 2004 and 2008. During the 2008 campaign Jello played at rallies and answered questions for journalists in support of Nader. When gay rights activists accused Nader of costing Al Gore the 2000 election, Biafra reminded them that Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Center wanted warning stickers on albums with content referencing homosexuality.

After Barack Obama won the general election, Biafra wrote an open letter making suggestions on how to run his term as president. Biafra criticized Obama during his term, stating that "Obama even won the award for best advertising campaign of 2008." Biafra dubbed Obama "Barackstar O'Bummer". Biafra refused to support Obama in 2012. Biafra has stated that he feels that Obama continued many of George W. Bush's policies, summarizing Obama's policies as containing "worse and worse laws against human rights and more and more illegal unconstitutional spying."

On September 18, 2015, it was announced that Biafra would be supporting Bernie Sanders in his campaign for the 2016 presidential election. He has strongly criticized the political position of Donald Trump, saying "how can people be so fucking stupid" on hearing the election result. He also criticized Trump's cabinet picks, saying of then-Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, "The last person we want with their finger on the nuclear button is somebody connected to this extreme Christianist doomsday cult."

On February 28, 2020, Jello announced that he would be supporting both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election. "I personally like Warren slightly better than Bernie because: 1) She’s done her homework. Bernie too, but not to quite the same depth or degree. 2) Think about it—who really has a better chance of actually beating Trump, and helping flip Congress and state legislatures? It’s Elizabeth Warren, hands down." He went on to say that he considered Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg "almost as bad as Trump".

On April 12, 2020, Biafra expressed disappointment that Sanders had suspended his campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination.

Boycott of Israel
In mid-2011 Jello Biafra and his band were scheduled to play at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv. They came under pressure by the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and finally decided to cancel the concert – after a debate which according to Biafra "deeply tore at the fabric of our band ... This whole controversy has been one of the most intense situations of my life – and I thrive on intense situations".

Biafra then decided to travel to Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, at his own expense, and talk with Israeli and Palestinian activists as well as with fans disappointed at his cancellation. In the article stating his conclusions he wrote: "I will not perform in Israel unless it is a pro-human rights, anti-occupation event, that does not violate the spirit of the boycott. Each musician, artist, etc. must decide this for themselves. I am staying away for now, but am also really creeped out by the attitudes of some of the hardliners and hope someday to find a way to contribute something positive here. I will not march or sign on with anyone who runs around calling people Zionazis and is more interested in making threats than making friends."

Personal life
Biafra married Theresa Soder, a.k.a. Ninotchka, lead singer of San Francisco-area punk band the Situations, on October 31, 1981. The wedding was conducted by Flipper vocalist/bassist Bruce Loose, who became a Universal Life Church minister specifically to conduct the ceremony, which took place in a graveyard. The wedding reception, which members of Flipper, Black Flag, and D.O.A. attended, was held at director Joe Rees' Target Video studios. The marriage ended in 1986.

Biafra generally does not discuss his private life. He lives in San Francisco, California.

Selected discography
For a more complete list, see the Jello Biafra discography.

Dead Kennedys

 * 1980 – Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
 * 1981 – In God We Trust, Inc.
 * 1982 – Plastic Surgery Disasters
 * 1985 – Frankenchrist
 * 1986 – Bedtime for Democracy
 * 1987 – Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death

Spoken word

 * 1987 – No More Cocoons
 * 1989 – High Priest of Harmful Matter: Tales From the Trial
 * 1991 – I Blow Minds for a Living
 * 1994 – Beyond the Valley of the Gift Police
 * 1998 – If Evolution Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Evolve
 * 2000 – Become the Media
 * 2002 – The Big Ka-Boom, Pt. 1
 * 2002 – Machine Gun in the Clown's Hand
 * 2006 – In the Grip of Official Treason

Lard

 * 1989 – The Power of Lard
 * 1990 – The Last Temptation of Reid
 * 1997 – Pure Chewing Satisfaction
 * 2000 – 70's Rock Must Die

Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine

 * 2009 – The Audacity of Hype
 * 2011 – Enhanced Methods of Questioning
 * 2012 – SHOCK-U-PY
 * 2013 – White People and the Damage Done
 * 2020 – Tea Party Revenge Porn

Filmography

 * 1977 – This Is America, Pt. 2
 * 1981 – Urgh! A Music War
 * 1983 – Anarchism in America
 * 1986 – Lovedolls Superstar, directed by Dave Markey
 * 1987 – Household Affairs, directed & filmed by Allen Ginsberg
 * 1988 – Tapeheads, directed by Bill Fishman
 * 1990 – Terminal City Ricochet
 * 1991 – Highway 61, directed by Bruce McDonald
 * 1994 – Skulhedface, directed by Melanie Mandl
 * 1997 – Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore, directed by Sarah Jacobson
 * 1999 – The Widower
 * 1999 – Virtue
 * 2001 – Plaster Caster
 * 2002 – Bikini Bandits, directed by Steve and Peter Grasse
 * 2004 – Death and Texas
 * 2004 – Punk: Attitude
 * 2005 – We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen
 * 2006 – Punk's Not Dead, directed by Susan Dynner
 * 2006 – Whose War?, directed by Donald Farmer
 * 2007 – American Drug War: The Last White Hope, directed by Kevin Booth
 * 2008 – Nerdcore Rising, directed by Negin Farsad
 * 2009 – Open Your Mouth and Say Mr. Chi Pig, directed by Sean Patrick Shaul
 * 2010 – A Man Within, directed by Yony Leyser
 * 2011 – I Love You ... I Am the Porn Queen, short film directed by Ani Kyd
 * 2014 – Heino: Made in Germany, directed by Oliver Schwabe
 * 2014 – Portlandia, season 4, episode 4 – "Pull-Out King"
 * 2018 – Bathtubs Over Broadway, directed by Dava Whisenant (as himself)
 * 2018 – Boiled Angels: The Trial of Mike Diana, directed by Frank Henenlotter (narrator)
 * 2019 – The Last Black Man in San Francisco, directed by Joe Talbot

title: Jello Biafra


text:
John Grierson

John Grierson (26 April 1898 – 19 February 1972) was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. In 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" in a review of Robert J. Flaherty's Moana.

Early life
Grierson was born in the old schoolhouse in Deanston, near Doune, Scotland, to schoolmaster Robert Morrison Grierson from Boddam, near Peterhead, and Jane Anthony, a teacher from Ayrshire. His mother, a suffragette and ardent Labour Party activist, often took the chair at Tom Johnston's election meetings.

The family moved to Cambusbarron, Stirling, in 1900, when the children were still young, after Grierson's father was appointed headmaster of Cambusbarron school. When the family moved, John had three elder sisters, Agnes, Janet, and Margaret, and a younger brother, Anthony. John and Anthony were enrolled at Cambusbarron school in November 1903. His sister Margaret died in 1906; however, the family continued to grow as John gained three younger sisters, Dorothy, Ruby, and finally Marion in 1907.

Both parents steeped their son in liberal politics, humanistic ideals, and Calvinist moral and religious philosophies, particularly that education was essential to individual freedom and that hard and meaningful work was the way to prove oneself worthy in the sight of God. John was enrolled in the High School at Stirling in September 1908, and he played football and rugby for the school.

World War I
In July 1915, Grierson left school with an overall subject mark of 82%; John had sat the bursary examination at Gilmorehill the month before, as his parents wanted him to follow his elder sisters, Janet and Agnes, in going to the University of Glasgow. The results for the bursary examination were not posted until October 1915; Grierson applied to work at the munitions at Alexandria; the munitions building had been the original home of the Argyll Motor Company which had earlier in the twentieth century built the first complete motor car in Scotland.

Grierson was the second name on the bursary list and received the John Clark bursary, which was tenable for four years. Grierson entered the University of Glasgow in 1916; however, he was unhappy that his efforts to help in World War I were only through his work at the munitions. Grierson wanted to join the navy; his family on his father's side had long been lighthouse keepers, and John had many memories of visiting lighthouses and being beside the sea. He went to the Crystal Palace in London to train with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. In his recruitment letter he had added a year to his age so that he could attend.

On 7 January 1916, Grierson was sent to the wireless telegraphy station at Aultbea, Cromarty, as an ordinary telegraphist but was promoted to telegraphist on 2 June 1916. On 23 January 1917, he became a telegraphist on the minesweeper H.M.S Surf and served there until 13 October 1917. The next day he joined H.M.S Rightwhale, where he was promoted to leading telegraphist on 2 June 1918 and remained on the vessel until he was demobilised with a British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

University of Glasgow
Grierson returned to university in 1919; he joined the Fabian Society in 1919 and dissolved it in 1921. The New University Labour Club was initiated by John as well as the Critic's Club; he also had poetry published in the Glasgow University magazine from November 1920 until February 1923. Grierson received the Buchan Prize in the Ordinary Class of English Language in the academic year of 1919–20, he also received the prize and first-class certificate in the academic year of 1920–21 in the Ordinary Class of Moral Philosophy and graduated with a Master of Arts in English and moral philosophy in 1923.

In 1923, Grierson received a Rockefeller Research Fellowship to study in the United States at the University of Chicago, and later at Columbia and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focus was the psychology of propaganda—the impact of the press, film, and other mass media on forming public opinion. Grierson was particularly interested in the popular appeal and influence of the "yellow" (tabloid) press, and the influence and role of these journals on the education of new American citizens from abroad.

Social critic
In his review of Robert Flaherty's film Moana (1926) in the New York Sun (8 February 1926), Grierson wrote that it had 'documentary' value. In his essay "First Principles of Documentary" (1932), Grierson argued that the principles of documentary were that cinema's potential for observing life could be exploited in a new art form; that the "original" actor and "original" scene are better guides than their fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world; and that materials "thus taken from the raw" can be more real than the acted article. In this regard, Grierson's views align with the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov's contempt for dramatic fiction as "bourgeois excess", though with considerably more subtlety. Grierson's definition of documentary as "creative treatment of actuality" has gained some acceptance, though it presents philosophical questions about documentaries containing stagings and reenactments.

Like many social critics of the time, Grierson was profoundly concerned about what he perceived to be clear threats to democracy. In the US, he encountered a marked tendency toward political reaction, anti-democratic sentiments, and political apathy. He read and agreed with the journalist and political philosopher Walter Lippmann's book Public Opinion which blamed the erosion of democracy in part on the fact that the political and social complexities of contemporary society made it difficult if not impossible for the public to comprehend and respond to issues vital to the maintenance of democratic society.

In Grierson's view, a way to counter these problems was to involve citizens in their government with the kind of engaging excitement generated by the popular press, which simplified and dramatized public affairs. It was during this time that Grierson developed a conviction that motion pictures could play a central role in promoting this process. (It has been suggested that some of Grierson's notions regarding the social and political uses of film were influenced by reading Lenin's writing about film as education and propaganda.)

Grierson's emerging view of film was as a form of social and political communication—a mechanism for social reform, education, and perhaps spiritual uplift. His view of Hollywood movie-making was considerably less sanguine:

 * "In an age when the faiths, the loyalties, and the purposes have been more than usually undermined, mental fatigue--or is it spiritual fatigue?--represents a large factor in everyday experience. Our cinema magnate does no more than exploit the occasion.  He also, more or less frankly, is a dope pedlar."

Film critic
Grierson's emerging and outspoken film philosophies caught the attention of New York film critics at the time. He was asked to write criticism for the New York Sun. At the Sun, Grierson wrote articles on film aesthetics and audience reception, and developed broad contacts in the film world. According to popular myth, in the course of this writing stint, Grierson coined the term "documentary" in writing about Robert J. Flaherty's film Moana (1926): "Of course Moana, being a visual account of events in the daily life of a Polynesian youth and his family, has documentary value."

During this time, Grierson was also involved in scrutinizing the film industries of other countries. He may have been involved in arranging to bring Sergei Eisenstein's groundbreaking film The Battleship Potemkin (1925) to US audiences for the first time. Eisenstein's editing techniques and film theories, particularly the use of montage, would have a significant influence on Grierson's own work.

Filmmaker
Grierson returned to Great Britain in 1927 armed with the sense that film could be enlisted to build national morale and consensus, and to deal with social problems, a theory he would enact especially during the Great Depression. Filmmaking for Grierson was an exalted, patriotic calling. Grierson's thinking was elitist in some ways, which he exposed with his many dicta of the time, such as "The elect have their duty" and "I look on cinema as a pulpit, and use it as a propagandist."

Grierson was also a cultural relativist. In the US, he had met pioneering documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty and respected Flaherty immensely for his contributions to documentary form and his attempts to use the camera to bring alive the lives of everyday people and events. Less commendable in Grierson's view was Flaherty's invalidating focus on exotic and faraway cultures. ("In the profounder kind of way", wrote Grierson of Flaherty, "we live and prosper each of us by denouncing the other"). In Grierson's view, the focus of film should be on the everyday drama of ordinary people. As Grierson wrote in his diaries: "Beware the ends of the earth and the exotic: the drama is on your doorstep wherever the slums are, wherever there is malnutrition, wherever there is exploitation and cruelty." "'You keep your savages in the far place Bob; we are going after the savages of Birmingham,' I think I said to him pretty early on. And we did.")

Empire Marketing Board
On his return to England, Grierson was employed on a temporary basis as an Assistant Films Officer of the Empire Marketing Board (EMB), a governmental agency which had been established in 1926 to promote British world trade and British unity throughout the empire. One of the major functions of the EMB was publicity, which the Board accomplished through exhibits, posters, and publications and films. It was within the context of this State-funded organisation that the "documentary" as we know it today got its start.

In late 1929 Grierson and his cameraman, Basil Emmott completed his first film, Drifters, which he wrote, produced and directed. The film, which follows the heroic work of North Sea herring fishermen, was a radical departure from anything being made by the British film industry or Hollywood. A large part of its innovation lies in the fierce boldness in bringing the camera to rugged locations such as a small boat in the middle of a gale while leaving relatively less of the action staged. The choice of topic was chosen less from Grierson's curiosity than the fact that he discovered that the Financial Secretary had made the herring industry his hobbyhorse. It premiered in a private film club in London in November 1929 on a double-bill with Eisenstein's -then controversial- film The Battleship Potemkin (which was banned from general release in Britain until 1954) and received high praise from both its sponsors and the press. The film was shown from 9 December 1929, in the Stoll in Kingsway and then was later screened throughout Britain.

After this success, Grierson moved away from film direction into a greater focus on production and administration within the EMB. He became a tireless organizer and recruiter for the EMB, enlisting a stable of energetic young filmmakers into the film unit between 1930 and 1933. Those enlisted included filmmakers Basil Wright, Edgar Anstey, Stuart Legg, Paul Rotha, Arthur Elton, Humphrey Jennings, Harry Watt, and Alberto Cavalcanti. This group formed the core of what was to become known as the British Documentary Film Movement. Robert Flaherty himself also worked briefly for the unit. In 1933 the EMB Film Unit was disbanded, a casualty of Depression-era economics.

General Post Office
Grierson's boss at the EMB moved to the General Post Office (GPO) as its first public relations officer, with the stipulation that he could bring the EMB film unit with him. Grierson's crew were charged with demonstrating how the Post Office facilitated modern communication and brought the nation together, a task aimed as much at GPO workers as the general public. During Grierson's administration, the GPO Film Unit produced a series of groundbreaking films, including Night Mail (dir. Basil Wright and Harry Watt, 1936) and Coal Face (dir. Alberto Cavalcanti, 1935). In 1934 he produced at the GPO Film Unit the award-winning The Song of Ceylon (dir. Basil Wright) which was sponsored jointly by the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Bureau and the EMB.

In 1934, Grierson sailed on the Isabella Greig out of Granton to film Granton Trawler on Viking Bank which is between Shetland and the Norwegian coast. The footage from his voyage was handed over to Edgar Anstey, who pulled footage of when the camera had fallen over on the deck of the boat to create a storm scene. Granton Trawler was a favourite film of Grierson's, he saw it as a homage to the Isabella Greig that was sunk in 1941 by German bombs when it went out to fish and was never seen again. The Private Life of Gannets was also filmed on the Isabella Greig; the film was shot on Grassholm with Grierson shooting the slow-motion sequence of the gannets diving for fish which took only one afternoon to shoot near Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth. The Private Life of Gannets went on to pick up an Academy Award in 1937.

Grierson eventually grew restless with having to work within the bureaucratic and budgetary confines of government sponsorship. Grierson resigned from the G.P.O. on 30 June 1937, which gave him more time to pursue his passions and the freedom to speak his mind on issues around the world. In response, he sought out private industry sponsorship for film production. He was finally successful in getting the British gas industry to underwrite an annual film program. Perhaps the most significant works produced during this time were Housing Problems (dir. Arthur Elton, Edgar Anstey, John Taylor, and Grierson's sister Ruby Grierson, 1935).

Canada
In 1938, Grierson was invited by the Canadian government to study the country's film production. Grierson sailed at the end of May in 1938 for Canada and arrived on 17 June. Grierson met with the Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King and also spoke with many important figures across Canada, they were all in agreement of the importance of film in reducing sectionalism and in promoting the relationship of Canada between home and abroad. The head of the Motion Picture Bureau for Canada, Frank Bagdley, did not appreciate Grierson's assessment and criticism of the films made by the Bureau which was that they focused too much on Canada as a place to holiday. Grierson delivered his report on government film propaganda and the weaknesses he had found in Canadian film production; his suggestion was to create a national coordinating body for the production of films. An abridged version of the report ran to 66 pages, which was prepared by August in London. Grierson returned to Britain but was invited back to Canada on 14 October 1938; he returned in November.

National Film Board of Canada and Wartime Information Board
In 1939, Canada created the National Film Commission, which would later become the National Film Board of Canada. The bill to create a National Film Board was drafted by Grierson; the bill was introduced in March 1939 and given Royal Assent on 2 May 1939. Grierson was appointed the first Commissioner of the National Film Board in October 1939. When Canada entered World War II in 1939, the NFB focused on the production of propaganda films, many of which Grierson directed. For example, captured footage of German war activity was incorporated in documentaries that were distributed to the then-neutral United States.

Grierson grieved the death of his sister Ruby in 1940; she was on the SS City of Benares while it was evacuating one hundred children to Canada. The Benares was torpedoed four days after its sailing, and sank within thirty-one minutes in a Force 10 Gale. Ruby Grierson had managed to enter Lifeboat 8, full with more than thirty people, including eighteen girls and two female escorts, but as it was lowering, a wave crashed into the lifeboat, sending it into a vertical position, and throwing everyone in that boat into the sea. No one from Boat 8 survived. In the end, of 406 people on board, only 148 people survived, including only 19 of 100 children. Grierson resigned from his position in January 1941. Over his year as Commissioner at the National Film Board 40 films were made; the year before the Motion Picture Bureau had made only one and a half. Recommendations for the future running were made for the National Film Board, and Grierson was persuaded to stay for a further six months to oversee the changes.

During WWII, Grierson was a consultant to prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King as a minister of the Wartime Information Board. He remained on the National Film Board and managed to complete his duties to Wartime Information Board as well through his deputies that aided him in the task. Grierson was asked to keep his dual role until January 1944, however, he resigned in 1943 as the job he had been asked to complete had been finished as far as he was concerned. Before he finished with the Wartime Information Bureau Grierson was also offered the role of chairman of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation but turned it down as he believed that this would give him too much power.

On 26 February 1942, Grierson attended the Academy Awards and received the award on behalf of the National Film Board for Churchill's Island. Grierson also presented the award for the best documentary, the first time that this award was given by the Academy. After the Dieppe Raid, there were reports that Canadians that had been taken as prisoners of war had been manacled under Hitler's orders. Grierson proposed that the Film Board show how the German prisoners of war were being treated in Canada through a film. Ham Wright directed the film showing the German sailors that had been captured; playing football, enjoying meals and looking healthy. Only one copy of the film was made, it was sent to the Swiss Red Cross who deliberately let it fall into German hands. Grierson was to learn at a later date that Hitler had indeed watched the film and ordered that the Canadian prisoners of war released from their manacles.

After the war, the National Film Board focused on producing documentaries that reflected the lives of Canadians. The National Film Board has become recognized around the world for producing quality films, some of which have won Academy Awards. The National Film Board had become one of the largest film studios and was respected around the world for what it had achieved; it had especially had influence in Czechoslovakia and China.

In December 1943 Grierson was elected by the Permanent Film Committee of the National Council for Canadian-Soviet Friendship to become honorary chairman. One of the tasks at the National Film Board that Grierson strongly pushed for the films being produced to be in French as well as English. He also pushed for a French unit in the National Film Board.

Grierson concentrated on documentary film production in New York after resigning his post following in August 1945; his resignation was to take effect in November 1945. In 1946 Grierson was asked to testify as part of the investigation of the Gouzenko Affair regarding communist spies in the National Film Board and the Wartime Information Board, rumours spread that he had been a leader of a spy ring during his offices with the Canadian government, a rumour he denied. Due to the rumours, the projects that Grierson had been trying to put together were not commissioned and he was barred from taking an important position at the United Nations.

Commission on Freedom of the Press
Grierson was appointed as a foreign adviser to the Commission on Freedom of the Press in December 1943, which had been set up by the University of Chicago. Grierson was able to make a large contribution to the committee which included Robert M. Hutchins, William E. Hocking, Harold D. Lasswell, Archibald McLeish and Charles Merriam. A Free and Responsible Press was published in 1947.

UNESCO
Grierson was offered the position of head of information at UNESCO at the end of 1946; he attended the first General Conference of UNESCO from 26 November until 10 December in Paris. He had the idea for the Unesco Courier which was published in several languages across the world, first as a tabloid and later as a magazine. Grierson was invited to open the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 1947, from 31 August to 7 September. At the start of 1948 he resigned from his position as director for Mass Communications and Public Information, he left in April to return to Britain.

Central Office of Information
In February 1948, Grierson was appointed the controller of the Central Office of Information's film operations to co-ordinate the work of the Crown Film Unit and Films Division, and to take overall charge of the planning, production and distribution of government films. On 23 June 1948, he accepted an honorary degree, an LL.D from the University of Glasgow. He left in 1950 due to financial restrictions on the documentaries that he wished to make.

Group 3
Grierson was appointed to the position of executive producer of Group 3 at the end of 1950; it was a film production enterprise that received loans of government money through the National Film Finance Corporation. They filmed at Southall Studios in West London but later moved to Beaconsfield Studios. Group 3 was to have continuous production from 1951 until 1955 when it stopped producing films, the organisation had made a loss of over £400,000 as production of the films usually ran over the time allocated, and there had also been difficulty getting the films shown in cinemas.

During this time Grierson had been diagnosed with tuberculosis in May 1953, he spent a fortnight in hospital and then had a year of convalescing at his home, Tog Hill in Calstone. Grierson spent much of his time corresponding with the directors at Group 3, as well as commenting on scripts and story ideas. He had recovered enough to attend the Cannes Film Festival in April 1954, taking the production of Man of Africa. At the Edinburgh Film Festival in the same year, a dinner was held in Grierson's honour to celebrate twenty-five years of documentary.

Films of Scotland Committee
Grierson joined the newly revived Films of Scotland Committee in 1955. Also on the committee were Norman Wilson, Forsyth Hardy, George Singleton, C. A. Oakley and Neil Paterson. In 1956, Grierson was the president of the Venice Film Festival's jury; he was also jury president at the Cork Film Festival and the South American Film Festival in 1958. In 1957, Grierson received a special Canadian Film Award. Grierson wrote the script for, Seawards the Great Ships, which was directed by Hilary Harris and awarded an Academy Award in 1961, a feat for the Films of Scotland Committee.

This Wonderful World
The first programme of This Wonderful World was aired on 11 October 1957 in Scotland; it was on The Culbin Sands which focused on how the Forestry Commission had replanted six thousand acres of woodland along the mouth of Findhorn. In the seventeenth century wild sand had blown into the mouth and covered the land, the successful replanting of the forest was a great success for the commission. This Wonderful World was shown weekly, other topics for episodes included Leonardo da Vinci, ballet, King Penguins and Norman McLaren's Boogie Doodle.

This Wonderful World began to be aired in England in February 1959, it ran for a further eight years and was in the Top Ten programmes for the week for the UK in 1960. In 1961, Grierson was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours. In 1962, he was a member of the jury for the Vancouver Film Festival, during his visit to Canada he also received the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Medal for his contribution to the visual arts. In 1963, he was busy with This Wonderful World and the Films of Scotland Committee but still found time to attend the twenty-fifth anniversary of the National Film Board in Montreal.

In 1965, Grierson was the patron of the Commonwealth Film Festival which took place in Cardiff in that year. In 1966, he was offered the role of Governor of the British Film Institute; however, he turned down the position. This Wonderful World changed the title to John Grierson Presents.

In 1967, after returning from the Oberhausen Film Festival where he had been the President of Honour of the jury, Grierson suffered a bout of bronchitis which lasted eight days. His brother Anthony, who had trained to be a doctor was called and diagnosed Grierson with emphysema, his coughing fits were a cause for concern, and he was admitted to Manor Hospital. Grierson decided to give up smoking and drinking to benefit his health.

Later life
Grierson opened the new primary school at Cambusbarron on 10 October 1967; his sister Dorothy attended the day with him. The BBC expressed their wishes to make a programme about Grierson in the year of his seventieth birthday, which he turned down three times In the year of his seventieth birthday, Grierson received many tributes from across the globe. He was made an honorary member of the Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians; he pressed for the ceremony to be held in Glasgow. He also received the Golden Thistle Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Art of Cinema at the Edinburgh Film Festival.

In January 1969, Grierson left for Canada to lecture at McGill University; enrollment for his classes grew to around seven hundred students. He also lectured at Carleton University once a fortnight. At Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh on 8 July 1969, Grierson received an Honorary Doctorate of Literature. A few days earlier on 4 July 1969, Grierson had opened the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther.

Grierson was a member of the jury for the Canadian Film Awards in 1970. He spent a few months in 1971, travelling around India instilling the importance of having small production units throughout the country. He returned to the UK in December 1971 and was meant to travel back to India; however, his trip was delayed by the Indo-Pakistani War. Grierson went into hospital for a health check-up in January 1972; he was diagnosed with lung and liver cancer and was given months to live. During his time in hospital he spent time dictating letters to his wife, Margaret, and received visitors; however, he fell unconscious on 18 February and died on the 19th. In his wishes for his funeral he had detailed his desire to be cremated. Also according to his wishes, his urn was placed in the sea off the Old Head in Kinsale, and his brother Anthony, who had died in August 1971, had his ashes placed at the same time. A small flotilla followed the Able Seaman, which carried the ashes, and when the urns were lowered into the water, the fishing boats sounded their sirens.

The Grierson Archive at the University of Stirling Archives was opened by Angus Macdonald in October 1977.

Filmography
Filmography as director:
 * Drifters (1929; first screened at the British premiere of Battleship Potemkin)
 * Granton Trawler (1934)

Filmography as producer/creative contributor:

 * O'er Hill and Dale (dir. Basil Wright 1932)
 * UP-STREAM: A Story of the Scottish Salmon Fisheries (dir. Arthur Elton 1932)
 * Cargo from Jamaica (dir. Basil Wright 1933)
 * Industrial Britain (dir. Robert Flaherty 1933)
 * Cable Ship (dir. Alexander Shaw and Stuart Legg 1933)
 * Coming of the Dial (dir. Stuart Legg 1933)
 * Liner Cruising South (dir. Basil Wright 1933)
 * Man of Aran (dir. Robert Flaherty 1934)
 * New Operator (dir. Stuart Legg 1934)
 * Pett and Pott: A Fairy Story of the Suburbs  (dir. Alberto Cavalcanti 1934)
 * Post Haste (dir. Humphrey Jennings 1934)
 * Spring Comes to England dir.  Donald Taylor 1934)
 * Six-thirty Collection (dir. Harry Watt and Edgar Anstey 1934)
 * Song of Ceylon (dir. Basil Wright 1934)
 * BBC: The Voice of Britain (dir. Stuart Legg 1935)
 * A Colour Box (dir. Len Lye 1935)
 * Housing Problems (dir. Edgar Anstey, Arthur Elton 1935)
 * Introducing the Dial (dir. Stuart Legg 1935)
 * Coal Face (dir. Alberto Cavalcanti 1935)
 * B.B.C. Droitwich (dir. Harry Watt 1935)
 * Night Mail ( dir. (Basil Wright, and Harry Watt 1936)
 * Saving of Bill Blewitt (dir. Basil Wright 1936)
 * Line To The Tschierva Hut (dir. Alberto Cavalcanti  1937)
 * Children At School (dir. Basil Wright  1937)
 * We Live In Two Worlds (dir. Alberto Cavalcanti  1937)
 * Daily Round (dir. Richard Massingham, Karl Urbahn 1937)
 * Trade Tattoo (dir. Len Lye 1937)
 * The Face of Scotland (dir. Basil Wright 1938)
 * The Children's Story (dir. Alexander Shaw 1938)
 * Scotland for Fitness (dir. Brian Salt 1938)
 * They Made the Land (dir. Mary Field 1938)
 * Sport in Scotland (dir. Stanley L. Russell 1938)
 * Wealth of a Nation (dir. Donald Alexander 1938)
 * Sea Food (1938)
 * The Londoners (dir. John Taylor (director) 1939)
 * Churchill's Island (dir. Stuart Legg 1941)
 * Four Men in Prison (dir. Max Anderson 1950)
 * Judgment Deferred (dir. John Baxter 1951)
 * Brandy for the Parson (dir. John Eldridge 1952)
 * The Brave Don't Cry (dir. Philip Leacock 1952)
 * Miss Robin Hood (dir. John Guillermin 1952)
 * Time Gentlemen, Please! (dir. Lewis Gilbert 1952)
 * You're Only Young Twice (dir. Terry Bishop 1952)
 * Man of Africa (dir. Cyril Frankel 1953)
 * Background (dir. Daniel Birt 1953)
 * Laxdale Hall (dir. John Eldridge 1953)
 * The Oracle (dir. C.M. Pennington-Richards 1953)
 * Child's Play (dir. Margaret Thomson 1954)
 * Devil on Horseback (dir. Cyril Frankel 1954)
 * Rivers at Work (dir. Lew Davidson 1958)
 * This Wonderful World (dir. various 1957–67)
 * Seawards the Great Ships (dir. Hilary Harris 1960)
 * The Heart of Scotland (dir. Laurence Henson 1961)
 * The Creative Process (dir. Donald McWilliams 1961)
 * Health of a City (dir. Derek Williams 1965)
 * I Remember, I Remember (dir. James Sutherland 1968)

Books

 * Grierson on Documentary (ed. Forsyth Hardy, Faber & Faber, 1946)
 * John Grierson: A Documentary Biography (ed. Forsyth Hardy, Faber & Faber, 1979)
 * John Grierson and the National Film Board: The Politics of Wartime Propaganda (ed. Gary Evans, University of Toronto Press, 1984)
 * The Colonized Eye: Rethinking the Grierson Legend (ed. Joyce Nelson, Between the Lines, 1988)

Documentary films

 * In a short film John Grierson at the NFT (1959) he recalls the British documentary film movement and is included in the Land of Promise Region 2 DVD set (BFI 2008).
 * Hitchcock on Grierson (1965), in which Alfred Hitchcock talks about his work and how it inspired him.
 * He was also the subject of a 1973 NFB documentary, Grierson, produced and directed by Roger Blais.

Grierson Documentary Film Awards
The Grierson Documentary Film Awards were established in 1972 to commemorate John Grierson and are currently supervised by The Grierson Trust. The aim of the awards is to recognise outstanding films that demonstrate integrity, originality and technical excellence, together with social or cultural significance.

Grierson Awards are presented annually in nine categories:
 * Best Documentary on a Contemporary Issue
 * Best Documentary on the Arts
 * Best Historical Documentary
 * Best Documentary on Science or the Natural World
 * The Frontier Post Award for Most Entertaining Documentary
 * Best Drama Documentary
 * Best International Cinema Documentary
 * Best Newcomer
 * Trustees' Award

Other
The Canadian Film Awards had presented a Grierson Award for "an outstanding contribution to Canadian cinema in the spirit of John Grierson."

title: John Grierson