Gulliver's Travels: Publication and Satirical Frame

Gulliver's Travels: Publication History

• Swift most probably had a transcribed copy of the text by the end of 1725. To keep the holograph safe (and perhaps to obscure his authorship) Swift had an additional copy made.
• This latter manuscript copy (made by an amanuensis) was sent to the printer in 1726 and was used to set the text of Gulliver's Travels.
• Swift set out for London from Dublin on 6 March 1726, bringing with him the copy for the printer. Shortly afterwards, Charles Ford arrived with the holograph.
• An approach to the publisher Benjamin Motte seems to have been made around 8 August by means of a letter from “Richard Sympson.”
• The letter was accompanied by ‘about a fourth part’ of the text of Gulliver's Travels as a sample.
• All materials reached Motte in a clandestine manner, as the poet Alexander Pope informed Swift on 16 Nov. 1726: “Motte receiv’d the copy (he tells me) he knew not from whence, nor from whom, dropp’d at his house in the dark, from a Hackney-coach.”
• Motte took the manuscript to his friend Andrew Tooke, and they made deletions and insertions that resulted in a safer text.
• The first edition was quickly exhausted, and Motte published two further octavo editions before the end of the year. These three editions comprise a total of 10,000 copies.
• When Swift examined the printed version of his work, he noticed Andrew Tooke had meddled with it.
• On 3 January 1727, Charles Ford, at Swift’s request, wrote to Motte and presented the author’s complaints with a list of over a hundred passages to be altered.
• All corrections (except for three) were added to his “second edition” published on 4 May 1727.
• While Motte was preparing his “second edition,” Swift was busy writing “A letter from Capt. Gulliver to his cousin Sympson,” which bears the date 2 April 1727.
• This letter was meant to appear in Motte’s “second edition” but was not published until Faulkner’s edition of 1735.

The Opening Satirical Frame

Elements of the Satirical Frame

By “opening satirical frame” I refer to:

• The prefatory material of George Faulkner’s 1735 Dublin edition
• The frontispiece of that edition
• The opening pages of the voyage to Lilliput.

Frontispiece Evolution

FRONTISPIECE: In 1726 the frontispiece simply read, “Captain Lemuel Gulliver, of Redriff Ætat. Suae 58,” which was also Swift’s age.

In a later second state of the portrait, there was a Latin quotation taken from the poet Persius referring to Gulliver’s purity of mind with “heart steeped in nobility and honour”.

Caption Changes: 1726 vs. 1735 Editions

1726 ED. 1ST AND 2ND STATE: The caption in the 1735 edition was entirely changed and read, “Capt. Lemuel Gulliver Splendide Mendax. Hor.”

The Latin phrase taken from Horace refers to Hypermestra, the only daughter of Danaus that disobeyed him in order to save her husband.

Thus it implies both unreliability and some sort of nobility of purpose.

In the 1735 edition, he looks younger, and instead of looking like a philosopher, he looks like a captain. In fact, he is not the same man that appears in the previous ones. The reason behind this was due to the different size of the editions. The picture from one edition did not work for the other. In the page 46: Splendide Mendax, someone who lies splendidly. In this edition (1735) Swift is directly implied in the production of the book, so either he wrote it or approved it. Anyone who didn't know Latin would not understand it, and they would think that he was an important man. Only those few who knew Latin (a select group to whom Swift is writing) would understand it. But he takes this quote from Hypermestra; he lies in the same way she did, with an important reason, to preserve his nation (England).