Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift

Language: English

Publisher: Barnes & Noble

Published: Jan 1, 1726

Description:

Gullivers Travels , by Jonathan Swift , is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

  • New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars
  • Biographies of the authors
  • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
  • Footnotes and endnotes
  • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
  • Comments by other famous authors
  • Study questions to challenge the readers viewpoints and expectations
  • Bibliographies for further reading
  • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate

All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each readers understanding of these enduring works. Considered the greatest satire ever written in English, Jonathan Swift ’s Gulliver’s Travels chronicles the fantastic voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, principally to four marvelous realms: Lilliput, where the people are six inches tall; Brobdingnag, a land inhabited by giants; Laputa, a wondrous flying island; and a country where the Houyhnhnms, a race of intelligent horses, are served by savage humanoid creatures called Yahoos.

Beneath the surface of this enchanting fantasy lurks a devastating critique of human malevolence, stupidity, greed, vanity, and short-sightedness. A brilliant combination of adventure, humor, and philosophy, Gulliver’s Travels is one of literature’s most durable masterpieces.


Michael Seidel is Jesse and George Siegel Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He has written widely on eighteenth-century literature. His books include Satiric Inheritance: Rabelais to Sterne (1979), Exile and the Narrative Imagination (1986), and Robinson Crusoe: Island Myths and the Novel (1991).

Lemuel Gulliver always dreamed of traveling the world. But when a violent storm claims his ship and casts him adrift among uncharted lands, he is taken to places that he could not even dream of. Traveling to the nation of Lilliput, where the inhabitants measure just centimeters tall, and to Brobdingnag, where they tower into the sky like giants, Gulliver voyages to an island floating above the clouds, visits a race of immortals, and finds himself stranded in a land ruled by horses. Face to face with warring armies and power-hungry kings, each new journey makes Gulliver more desperate to find a way back home. But once he discovers the truth about his own land and himself, returning home becomes the last thing he desires. Written by world-renowned satirist, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver s Travels is one of the most gripping and poignant adventures ever told.