Gulliver's Travels

$ 8.00

Author: Jonathan Swift
Publisher: Dell 3308
Year: 1963 Print: 2 Cover Price: $.50
Condition: Very Good Plus. Light wear
Genre: Fiction/Classic
Pages: 351
SKU: 10123041E

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 simply as Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature.

Jonathan Swift's classic satirical narrative was first published in 1726, seven years after Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (one of its few rivals in fame and breadth of appeal). As a parody travel-memoir it reports on extraordinary lands and societies, whose names have entered the English language: notably the minute inhabitants of Lilliput, the giants of Brobdingnag, and the Yahoos in Houyhnhnmland, where talking horses are the dominant species. It spares no vested interest from its irreverent wit, and its attack on political and financial corruption, as well as abuses in science, continue to resonate in our own times.

Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon on a merchant ship, is shipwrecked on the strange island of Lilliput where the inhabitants are only six inches tall. After they overcome their timidity about the giant in their midst,Gulliver becomes embroiled in the islanders petty disputes about such issues as whether it is better to break an egg at the big end or the little end, the rivalry between those who wear high heels and those who prefer low heels, and the ridiculous pomposity of their miniature emperor.
This is not the end of Gulliver's adventures, for he later finds himself on
Brobdingnag, where the natives are incredibly tall; the flying island of Laputo, where they intellectualise from dawn till dusk; and, finally, the country of the wise "Houyhnhnms and the vulgar Yahoos. All
human life is satirised here, from politicians to priests and philosophers to poets.

About Author
Jonathon Swift(1667-1745), ed. at Trinity College, Dublin, entered household of Sir W. Temple at Moor Park 1692, and became his secretray, became known to William III., and met E. Johnson (Stella), left T. in 1694 and returned to Ireland, took orders and wrote Tale of a Tub and Battle of Books (published 1704), returned to Sir W. T. 1698, and on his death in 1699 published his works, returned to Ireland and obtained some small preferments, visits London and became one of the circle of Addison, etc., deserts the Whigs and joins the Tories 1710, attacking the former in various papers and pamphlets, Dean of St. 1713, he began his Journal to Stella, Drapier’s Letters appeared 1724, visits England, and joins with Pope and Arbuthnot in Miscellanies 1726, published Gulliver’s Travels 1727

Related Products