Jonathan Swift

Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift

Publisher Marketing: Written in the Year 1727. I hope you will be ready to own publicly, whenever you shall be called to it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect account of my travels, with directions to hire some young gentleman of either university to put them in order, and correct the style, as my cousin Dampier did, by my advice, in his book called "A Voyage round the world." But I do not remember I gave you power to consent that any thing should be omitted, and much less that any thing should be inserted; therefore, as to the latter, I do here renounce every thing of that kind; particularly a paragraph about her majesty Queen Anne, of most pious and glorious memory; although I did reverence and esteem her more than any of human species. But you, or your interpolator, ought to have considered, that it was not my inclination, so was it not decent to praise any animal of our composition before my master Houyhnhnm: And besides, the fact was altogether false; for to my knowledge, being in England during some part of her majesty's reign, she did govern by a chief minister; nay even by two successively, the first whereof was the lord of Godolphin, and the second the lord of Oxford; so that you have made me say the thing that was not. Likewise in the account of the academy of projectors, and several passages of my discourse to my master Houyhnhnm, you have either omitted some material circumstances, or minced or changed them in such a manner, that I do hardly know my own work. When I formerly hinted to you something of this in a letter, you were pleased to answer that you were afraid of giving offence; that people in power were very watchful over the press, and apt not only to interpret, but to punish every thing which looked like an innuendo (as I think you call it). But, pray how could that which I spoke so many years ago, and at about five thousand leagues distance, in another reign, be applied to any of the Yahoos, who now are said to govern the herd; especially at a time when I little thought, or feared, the unhappiness of living under them? Have not I the most reason to complain, when I see these very Yahoos carried by Houyhnhnms in a vehicle, as if they were brutes, and those the rational creatures? And indeed to avoid so monstrous and detestable a sight was one principal motive of my retirement hither. Review Citations: Hornbook Guide to Children 10/01/2008 pg. 347 (EAN 9781402743399, Hardcover) Hornbook Guide to Children 07/01/2008 pg. 347 (EAN 9781402743399, Hardcover) Wilson Middle/Junior Hi Catalo 01/01/2009 pg. 1019 (EAN 9781402743399, Hardcover) Hornbook Guide to Children 07/01/2006 pg. 327 (EAN 9781402726620, Hardcover) Booklist 11/15/1992 pg. 599 (EAN 9780192798978, Hardcover) Hornbook Guide to Children 01/01/1992 (EAN 9780192798978, Hardcover) Newsweek 07/21/2008 pg. 16 (EAN 9780140382402, Paperback) Hornbook Guide to Children 01/01/1990 (EAN 9780816718665, Paperback) Hornbook Guide to Children 01/01/1990 (EAN 9780816718658, Hardcover) School Library Journal 02/01/2001 (EAN 9780001052413, Analog Audio Cassette) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2006 pg. 905 (EAN 9780679405450, Hardcover) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2010 pg. 900 (EAN 9780679405450, Hardcover) Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/2011 pg. 1070 (EAN 9780679405450, Hardcover) Hornbook Guide to Children 01/01/2000 pg. 313 (EAN 9780789453075, Hardcover) Hornbook Guide to Children 07/01/2000 pg. 313 (EAN 9780789453075, Hardcover) Ingram Paperback Advance 06/01/1999 pg. 42 (EAN 9780451527325, Mass Market Paperbound) Choice 06/01/2013 (EAN 9780521841641, Hardcover) Books & Culture 07/01/2014 pg. 30 (EAN 9780521841641, Hardcover) Audio File 12/01/2010 pg. 58 (EAN 9781843794196, Compact Disc) School Library Journal 09/01/2011 pg. 190 (EAN 9789380028507, Paperback) Hornbook Guide to Children 07/01/2010 pg. 327 (EAN 9780375965692, Library Binding) Hornbook Guide to Children 07/01/2010 pg. 327 (EAN 9780375865695, Paperback) Contributor Bio:  Swift, Jonathan Born in 1667, Jonathan Swift was an Irish writer and cleric, best known for his works Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, and A Journal to Stella, amongst many others. Educated at Trinity College in Dublin, Swift received his Doctor of Divinity in February 1702, and eventually became Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Publishing under the names of Lemeul Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, and M. B. Drapier, Swift was a prolific writer who, in addition to his prose works, composed poetry, essays, and political pamphlets for both the Whigs and the Tories, and is considered to be one of the foremost English-language satirists, mastering both the Horatian and Juvenalian styles. Swift died in 1745, leaving the bulk of his fortune to found St. Patrick's Hospital for Imbeciles, a hospital for the mentally ill, which continues to operate as a psychiatric hospital today.