A Peace Proposal for the War of the Sexes

Abstract

Angered by the daily sight of poverty and starvation in eighteenth-century Ireland, Jonathan Swift modestly proposed that babies be sold for food. "A young, healthy child, well nursed,” he claimed to have discovered, “is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.”