Gulliver's Travels

New Edition

Jonathan Swift
Edited with an Introduction by Claude Rawson and Notes by Ian Higgins

Oxford World's Classics

The fullest, most up-to-date paperback edition currently on the market. The introduction and notes, by two of the General Editors of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, elucidate the work in line with the latest critical thinking and provide a wealth of background information and explanatory help.
Reproduces the 1735 edition of the text and includes for the first time not only the frontispiece and title-page from that edition but the frontispiece portraits of Gulliver/Swift that appeared in successive editions and whose subtle changes contribute to the reader's uncertainty about the veracity of the author
Up-to-date bibliography
New chronology

Gulliver's Travels

New Edition

Jonathan Swift
Edited with an Introduction by Claude Rawson and Notes by Ian Higgins

Description

In Gulliver's Travels, the narrator represents himself as a reliable reporter of the fantastic adventures he has just experienced. But how far can we rely on a narrator who has been impersonated by someone else? The work purports to be a travel book, and describes the shipwrecked Gulliver's encounters with the inhabitants of four extraordinary places: Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the country of the Houyhnhnms. An extraordinarily skillful blend of fantasy and realism makes Gulliver's Travels by turns hilarious, frightening, and profound. Swift's alter ego plays tricks on us, and our gullibility uncovers one of the world's most disturbing satires of the human condition.

The fullest, most up-to-date paperback of Gulliver's Travels currently available, this new edition contains an astute analysis of the nature of Swift's satire. It includes the changing frontispiece portraits of Gulliver that appeared in successive early editions and whose subtle changes contribute to the reader's uncertainty about the veracity of the author. A new introduction by Claude Rawson draws on the latest scholarship and considers Swift's role-playing and the relationship of the author to Gulliver.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Gulliver's Travels

New Edition

Jonathan Swift
Edited with an Introduction by Claude Rawson and Notes by Ian Higgins

Oxford World's Classics

From Our Blog

Jonathan Swift, Irish writer

By Claude Rawson Jonathan Swift, whom T. S. Eliot called 'colossal,' 'the greatest writer of English prose, and the greatest man who has ever written great English prose,' died on 19 October 1745.

Posted on October 19, 2013

Read the blog post