Gulliver’s Travels, originally Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, satirising both human nature and the ‘travellers’ tales’ literary subgenre. It is Swift’s best-known full-length work and a classic of English literature. The English dramatist John Gay remarked, ‘It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery.’ The book has been adapted into films, movies and theatrical performances over the centuries. The book was an immediate success, and Swift claimed that he wrote Gulliver’s Travels ‘to vex the world rather than divert it’.
About the author
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish writer 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 pseudonymsincluding Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M. B. Drapieror 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’.
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