Essays & ideas · Free digital edition
A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: Free Online Edition with Read-Aloud and AI Reading Tools
By Jonathan Swift · 1729
Swift’s famously savage satire uses an unthinkable proposal to expose indifference toward poverty and injustice.
About this free edition
Read A Modest Proposal online
Published in 1729, A Modest Proposal is one of Jonathan Swift's most enduring and unsettling works. Written in the form of a reasoned policy essay, it uses a deliberately unthinkable suggestion to expose the callousness with which poverty and injustice were treated by those in power. Swift opens on a street scene of visible suffering — beggars crowding the roads — and builds from there with chilling composure. The piece rewards close, careful reading, and it remains a landmark example of irony used as moral argument. This free edition in the Vocalini Open Library is available to read and listen to immediately, with no account or checkout required.
- Read and listen at the same time, with word-level highlighting that follows the read-aloud playback.
- Select any passage to simplify the language, get key points, or ask an AI a question about the text.
- Completely free with no account, no checkout, and no time limit on access.
Accessible reading tools
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Free text-to-speech
Listen to the visible book text at your pace without buying an audiobook or creating an account.
Synchronized highlighting
Sentence and word highlighting move with the voice, helping you follow the page and keep your place.
Built-in AI reading help
Select a passage to get key points, simplify difficult wording, request an explanation, or ask a question.
This edition includes several tools designed to make reading more comfortable and effective. Text-to-speech reads the visible text aloud while sentence and word highlighting stays synchronized with playback, which can help readers follow along without losing their place. Built-in AI tools let you select any passage to get key points, simplify the wording, request an explanation, or ask a question about what you have read. These features are intended to support readers with dyslexia, ADHD, learning disabilities, or visual-tracking needs, as well as anyone reading in an additional language. No formal accessibility certification is claimed, and individual experiences will vary.
From the opening pages
Begin reading
“It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets crowded with beggars.”
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