Gulliver’s Travels, originally titled Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, satirising human nature and the imaginary “travellers’ tales” literary subgenre. It is Swift’s best-known full-length work, one of the most famous classics of English literature, and popularised the fictional island of Lilliput. The English poet and dramatist John Gay remarked, “It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery.” The book has been adapted for over a dozen films, movies, plays, and theatrical performances over the centuries.
The book was an immediate success, and Swift claimed that he wrote Gulliver’s Travels “to vex the world rather than divert it”.
