Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels: Editions and Origins

The Publication History of Gulliver's Travels

The introductory material for George Faulkner's 1735 Dublin edition and the frontispieces of that edition provide significant insight into the opening pages of the Voyage to Lilliput. To avoid identification and persecution for his anti-Whig satire, Jonathan Swift had to exclude himself from the first edition. It was published by Benjamin Motte in London on October 28, 1726, without any attribution to Swift. There was a letter to Gulliver's supposed cousin, Richard Sympson (R.S.), suggesting finances for the publication. Motte's edition was full of misprints and toned down the satire, which was later corrected in 1727. In the edition of 1735, Swift published the letter to Gulliver's cousin.

Frontispieces and Latin Allusions

The frontispiece in 1726 simply read: "Captain Lemuel Gulliver of Redriff, Aetat. Suae 58," which was also Swift's age at the time. There was a Latin quotation referring to Gulliver's purity of mind with a "heart steeped in nobility and honor." In the 1735 edition, this was changed to: "Captain Lemuel Gulliver, Splendide Mendax" (Horace).

Etymology and Character of Lemuel Gulliver

The name Lemuel is a rare forename found twice in the Bible (Hebrew). The surname Gulliver carries satirical connotations: "gullible" suggests readers believe Gulliver's Travels is real. "Gull" meant "a dupe," while "to gull" means "to cheat." "Ver" relates to veracity; thus, Gulliver is the "dupe of the truth."

In the opening letter, Gulliver claims to have advised the most famous English explorer, William Dampier, to correct his New Voyage Round the World (1697). The letter closes by rejecting Yahoos and visionary schemes, with Gulliver retreating to his stable to confer with his "degenerate" Houyhnhnms. The maps contain inaccuracies such as "Diemen's Land and Sumatra," yet Lilliput and Blefuscu are rendered with cartographic reality.

Biographical Account and Satirical Allusions

Book 1 provides a biographical account of Gulliver combined with satirical allusions. Gulliver is the non-inheriting middle son of a lesser Puritan faction in Nottinghamshire. He cannot remain at Emmanuel College because of his father's economic situation. In Cambridge, he plans his career as a seaman. As a dissenter, he cannot study at the Royal College of Physicians; instead, he attends Leiden University, which always gave refuge to Puritan exiles.

When he returns from his first voyages to London, he sets up as a physician and marries the daughter of a hosier from Newgate. This is a satirical attack on Daniel Defoe, who was an original hosier and married the heiress of someone imprisoned in Newgate. It has been argued that Swift deliberately made Gulliver the middle son of a middle-class English family. Gulliver comes from the lesser Puritan gentry, down on their fortunes, and must turn from the pursuits of a leisured professional gentleman to the urban, mercantile, and utilitarian world. In this framework, he embodies the values, ideas, and activities of modernism and self-reliance.