Gulliver’s Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World

Jonathan Swift disguised one of the fiercest satires in English as a sailor’s travelogue. Lemuel Gulliver, a ship’s surgeon, washes up in four strange lands across as many voyages: Lilliput, where thumb-sized people wage war over which end of an egg to crack; Brobdingnag, where giants find European customs grotesque; the floating island of Laputa, home to scholars lost in useless theory; and finally a country ruled by rational horses who look on humankind with disgust. Beneath the tall tales, Swift takes aim at party politics, national vanity, empire, and the limits of reason itself. Sharp, strange, and still funny three centuries on, it reads as both children’s adventure and merciless commentary on human folly. This free PDF and EPUB edition brings the complete voyages together.