George Orwell called Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift one of the six essential works in all of literature. A biting satire on human nature, its original title, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, marks it as a parody of the traveler’s tale genre popular at the time exemplified by Robinson Crusoe. Gulliver’s Travels was published anonymously at first and additions and cuts were made to avoid censure by the government. It was an instant hit when it appeared; the publisher used five printers to keep up with demand, which still sold out in its first week.

The book recounts four voyages, each of great length, in which the naïve and gullible Gulliver is taken by various accidents to strange and foreign lands. He finds himself first a giant among tiny people, then a tiny person among giants. He is rescued by a flying island of feckless rationalists pursuing absurd projects, rescued, and then classed with hideous humanoid Yahoos, who are ruled by the noble Houyhnhnms, an equine race of idealists . Cast out by fate again and again, the once adventurous and optimistic Gulliver returns to England to close out his days a misanthropic recluse, choosing to spend his time at the stables instead of in the society of his fellow humans.

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