Gulliver’s Travels
About this ebook
Swift's family has several interesting literary connections. His grandmother Elizabeth Swift was the niece of Sir Erasmus Dryden, grandfather of poet John Dryden. The same grandmother's and Katherine Dryden was a first cousin of Elizabeth, wife of Sir Walter Raleigh. His uncle Thomas Swift married a daughter of poet and playwright Sir William Davenant, a godson of William Shakespeare.
Jonathan Swift has put his best to complete this book. In his various forms, he completed this book such as started with as a surgeon and them captain of the various ships to complete voyages and so on. It is more or less a satirical work of Jonathan Swift. Also full of adventures and mockery of some issues in the form of satire. The story narrates about shipwreck and the only survivor is Gulliver. Somehow he reaches to Lilliput. Here the height of the people is less than 6 inches. Lilliput ask for help from Gulliver to save them against the empire of Blefusca. Gulliver prevents all of them. He captures all the fleet of Blefusca.
When the Lilliputians decide to sentence him by making him blind. Then he switches over to Blefusca then able to return to England. He does number of voyages. The story seems very adventurous and interesting.
About the author
Jonathan Swift, pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaff, (born Nov. 30, 1667, Dublin, Ire.-died Oct. 19, 1745, Dublin), Anglo-Irish author, who was the foremost prose satirist in the English language. Besides the celebrated novel Gulliver's Travels (1726), he wrote such shorter works as A Tale of a Tub (1704) and A Modest Proposal (1729).
Swift's father, Jonathan Swift the elder, was an Englishman who had settled in Ireland after the Stuart Restoration (1660) and become steward of the King's Inns, Dublin. In 1664 he married Abigail Erick, who was the daughter of an English clergyman. In the spring of 1667 Jonathan the elder died suddenly, leaving his wife, baby daughter, and an unborn son to the care of his brothers. The younger Jonathan Swift thus grew up fatherless and dependent on the generosity of his uncles. His education was not neglected, however, and at the age of six he was sent to Kilkenny School, then the best in Ireland. In 1682 he entered Trinity College, Dublin, where he was granted his bachelor of arts degree in February 1686 speciali gratia (by special favour), his degree being a device often used when a student's record failed, in some minor respect, to conform to the regulations.
Swift continued in residence at Trinity College as a candidate for his master of arts degree until February 1689. But the Roman Catholic disorders that had begun to spread through Dublin after the Glorious Revolution (168889) in Protestant England caused Swift to seek security in England, and he soon became a member of the household of a distant relative of his mother named Sir William Temple, at Moor Park, Surrey. Swift was to remain at Moor Park intermittently until Temple's death in 1699.
In 1692, through Temple's good offices, Swift received the degree of M.A. at the University of Oxford.
Between 1691 and 1694 Swift wrote a number of poems, notably six odes. But his true genius did not find expression until he turned from verse to prose satire and composed, mostly at Moor Park between 1696 and 1699, A Tale of a Tub, one of his major works. Published anonymously in 1704, this work was made up of three associated pieces: the Tale itself, a satire against the numerous and gross corruptions in religion and learning; the mock-heroic "Battle of the Books"; and the Discourse Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, which ridiculed the manner of worship and preaching of religious enthusiasts at that period. In the Battle of the Books, Swift supports the ancients in the longstanding dispute about the relative merits of ancient versus modern literature and culture. But A Tale of a Tub is the most impressive of the three compositions. This work is outstanding for its exuberance of satiric wit and energy and is marked by an incomparable command of stylistic effects, largely in the nature of parody.
