Gulliver's Travels

This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition™ includes a glossary and reader’s notes to help the modern reader contend with Swift’s complex references and vocabulary. First published anonymously in 1727, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels created a storm of criticism—from those who believed the stories to be true and “knew exactly” who Lemuel Gulliver was, to those who demanded that the writer of the seditious tales be hunted down and executed for high treason. Even today, Swift’s vitriolic attacks on politics, culture, and human nature itself have earned him the reputation of a crazed misanthrope. Swift, through his hero, consistently rails against political whims, human follies, and the bestial behaviors of the human race: In Lilliput, Gulliver is twelve times the size of the European-like natives. In Brobdingnag, he is one-twelfth the size of the primitive but moral inhabitants. In Laputa, buildings collapse and clothing does not fit, although constructed by the most “modern” and “reasonable” means. Finally, in the land of the horse-like Houyhnhnms Gulliver realizes that he and his race are nothing but a brood of Yahoos.