Gulliver's Travels

Sep 6, 2025 5:03 PM

Author:Jonathan Swift

Gulliver's Travels

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.

Reviews

When Selby decides to attack, it is with the shock of a practised mugger and with the speed and economy of a poet

—— The Los Angeles Times

Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists ... to understand his work is to understand the anguish of America

—— New York Times Book Review

'Rendered in prose whose steadiness and transparency throw the dark turbulence of what is happening into damning relief'

—— Peter Kemp , The Sunday Times

'A very gripping story . . . the reader is drawn in inexorably to discover what horror lies at the heart of it . . . an apocalyptic fable for today'

—— John Spurling , The Times Literary Supplement

'Many respectable judges would put Edric in the top ten of British novelists currently at work . . . as a writer, he specialises in the delicate hint and the game not given away'

—— D.J. Taylor , Spectator

'It will be surprising if this year sees a more disturbing or haunting novel'

—— Peter Kemp , The Sunday Times

'Stunning . . . evocatively brings to life the stifling humidity and constant rainfall of the Congo'

—— John Cooper , The Times

Devour it

—— Marie Claire

First-rate fiction . . . sharp, with great empathy

—— San Francisco Weekly

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