In 1689 Swift became secretary to English diplomat and writer Sir William Temple. He returned to Ireland in 1694 and took religious orders. Swift returned to Temple's household in 1696 and supervised the education of Esther Johnson， daughter of the widowed companion to Temple's sister. Swift privately called her Stella， and he began his Journal to Stella in 1710. Scholars are unsure of Swift's exact relationship with Stella； they may have been secretly married.

　　Swift's earliest prose work was The Battle of the Books （1697）， a burlesque of the controversy then raging in literary circles over the relative merits of ancient and modern writers. In 1710 a Tory government came to power in England， and Swift turned his biting satire against the Whigs. He assumed the editorship of the Examiner， the official Tory publication， and defended the Tory administration's policies. Swift's pamphlet The Conduct of the Allies （1711）， which charged that the Whigs had prolonged the War of the Spanish Succession out of self-interest， was instrumental in bringing about the dismissal of British army commander John Churchill， 1st Duke of Marlborough.

　　In 1714 the Tory administration fell， and Swift's political power was ended. In 1724 and 1725 he anonymously issued his Drapier's Letters， a series of pamphlets that prevented the debasing of Irish currency. In A Modest Proposal （1729）， Swift ironically suggests that poor Irish children be sold as food to wealthy English， thus turning an economic burden to general profit. For his championship of their cause in these essays， Swift became a hero of the Irish people. Swift's masterpiece， Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World， more popularly titled Gulliver's Travels， was published anonymously in 1726 and met with instant success. The satire is an allegorical attack on human society.