Book description
In the course of his famous travels, Gulliver is captured by miniature
people who wage war on each other because of religious disagreement over
how to crack eggs, is sexually assaulted by giants, visits a floating
island, and decides that the society of horses is better than that of
his fellow man. Swift's tough, filthy and incisive satire has much to
say about the state of the world today and is presented here in its
unexpurgated entirety.
Jonathan Swift was born on 30 November 1667 in Dublin, and educated
at Trinity College and Oxford University. After working for a time as
secretary to Sir William Temple in England, Swift was ordained as a
priest of the Church of Ireland and returned to Dublin in 1695. In
1713 he became Dean of St Patrick's. The first of his major satirical
works, A Tale of a Tub, was published in 1704 and through his
writing he became close friends with the poet Alexander Pope. Together
with other writers, they founded a literary group called the Martinus
Scriblerus Club in 1714. Gulliver's Travels(1726) is the only
book for which he received any money and he never wrote under his own
name. He died on 19 October 1745 and was buried in St Patrick's.
His Latin epitaph, written by himself, reads: 'Here lies the body of
Jonathan Swift, D. D., dean of this cathedral, where burning
indignation can no longer lacerate his heart. Go, traveller, and
imitate if you can a man who was an undaunted champion of liberty.'
