Book description
With an essay by George Orwell.
'Fifteen hundred of the Emperor's largest horses, each about four
inches and an half high, were employed to draw me towards the
Metropolis, which, as I said, was half a Mile distant'
A savage and hilarious satire, Gulliver's Travels sees Lemuel
Gulliver shipwrecked and adrift, subject to bizarre and unnerving
encounters with, among others, quarrelling Lilliputians,
philosophizing horses and the brutish Yahoo tribe, that change his
view of humanity - and himself - for ever. Swift's classic of 1726
portrays mankind in a distorted hall of mirrors as a diminished,
magnified and finally bestial species, presenting us with a comical
yet uncompromising reflection of ourselves.
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in
English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the
beginning of the First World War.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) somehow managed to balance his role as
Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin with being one of the most
effective, disgusted and ferocious satirists in the English language.
Gulliver's Travels
is both a parody of what Swift viewed as the ridiculously contrived
exotic travel genre pioneered by writers such as Captain William Dampier
and an incomparably vivid and funny narrative that lies at the very
heart of early English fiction.
