Gulliver's Travels (Illustrated Edition)

Author: (English) Swift
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: Gulliver's Travels is a captivating book. When it was first published in Britain in 1726, it was widely welcomed by readers and sold out within a week; it sold 10,000 copies in three weeks. It was also translated into French, Dutch, and German within a short two years. The renowned British novelist George Orwell read this work multiple times in his short life and called it one of the six works worth preserving. The point that this book is praised and draws the attention of critics lies in its satire of current events. Swift primarily criticized some ugly phenomena in the political and academic circles of the time. Many of the plots in the book allude to major political events of the era in which the author lived. To better understand the political satire in the book, it is necessary to learn about the author's political activities and the state of the political scene at the time. Gulliver's Travels is Swift's masterpiece, a remarkable book that far exceeds the scope of a "children's book." The book consists of four volumes, and in each volume, the protagonist, Gulliver, encounters unimaginable situations. The adventurer, a British surgeon by birth who rose to become a captain, travels to various places such as Lilliput, Brobdingnag, and the Flying Islands, forming the four parts of Gulliver's Travels.
In the second volume, Gulliver travels to Lilliput, where the inhabitants are only one-twelfth the size of him. The king of Lilliput considers himself a ruler of the world simply because his subjects are taller than his fingernails, and officials can be promoted to higher ranks by jumping rope higher. In the third volume, Gulliver's travels are centered around Laputa, with additional journeys to Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan. Gulliver's Travels is a novel that combines satire and adventure. In these fictional countries, there are strong traces of 18th-century British society. Through the protagonist's journeys to different countries, the book reveals the contradictions of British society at the time and delivers a sharp satire of the British political system.