Gulliver's Travels

In Gulliver's Travels, the narrator represents himself as a reliable reporter of the fantastic adventures he has just experienced. But how far can we rely on a narrator who has been impersonated by someone else? The work purports to be a travel book, and describes the shipwrecked Gulliver's encounters with the inhabitants of four extraordinary places: Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the country of the Houyhnhnms. A consumately skillful blend of fantasy and realism makes Gulliver's Travels by turns hilarious, frightening, and profound. Swift's alter ego plays tricks on us, and our gullibility uncovers one of the world's most disturbing satires of the human condition.

Children's Literature

As noted in the introduction to this adaptation which features the basic story plus background facts and photographs, the story of Lemuel Gulliver and his fascinating world travels has been engaging readers since Jonathan Swift wrote it in 1726. Far from being written as a children's story, the original Gulliver's Travels was a satire of the political leadership and social customs of the time. To help modern readers of all ages understand the satirical side of the story, the DK publishers have produced this version which retells the story in the main text, and, in the margins, explains many story references in notes, pictures, photographs, and diagrams. The technique works, and the explanations embellish rather than intrude on enjoyment of the story. Readers will get to know Gulliver as the braggart he is, while also hanging onto his every word. For those readers who have only met Gulliver through his relationship with the little Lilliputians, there are big surprises here; as he travels to many lands and encounters many cultures and people who are as fanciful as they are memorable. 2000, Dorling Kindersley Publishing, Ages 10 up, $14.95. Reviewer: Judy Katsh—Children's Literature

Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin in 1667. Although he spent most of his childhood in Ireland, he considered himself English, and, aged twenty-one, moved to England, where he found employment as secretary to the diplomat Sir William Temple. On Temple's death in 1699, Swift returned to Dublin to pursue a career in the church. By this time he was also publishing in a variety of genres, and between 1704 and 1729 he produced a string of brilliant satires, of which Gulliver's Travels is the best known. Between 1713 and 1742 he was dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin; he was buried there when he died in 1745.