GULLIVERS TRAVELS

An immaculate success on its publication in 1726, Gulliver`s Travels has since had an odd double life as both a classic traveller`s tale for children and a scathing satire of the human condition. Lemuel Gulliver`s adventures in a series of fantastical lands ` where he meets the tiny people of Lilliput, the giants of Brobdingnag, the excessively rational equine Houyhnhnms, the wild and brutish Yahoos, and the philosophical Laputans ` leave him with a deeply pessimistic perspective on his own kind. But Swift`s misanthropic vision clothes itself in such an exuberant outpouring of comic energy and creative high spirits ` encompassing such wonders as a flying island, talking horses, and an early prototype of the computer ` that it has entertained generations of readers of all ages, `from the cabinet council to the nursery`, as John Gay put it. Printed here in its unexpurgated entirety, Gulliver`s Travels demonstrates the power and originality of Swift`s satiric genius and the enduring appeal of his sense of the absurd.