Jonathan Swift's classic satirical narrative was first published in 1726, seven years after Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (one of its few rivals in fame and breadth of appeal). As a parody travel-memoir it reports on extraordinary lands and societies, whose names have entered the English language: notably the minute inhabitants of Lilliput, the giants of Brobdingnag, and the Yahoos in Houyhnhnmland, where talking horses are the dominant species. It spares no vested interest from its irreverent wit, and its attack on political and financial corruption, as well as abuses in science, continue to resonate in our own times. AUTHOR: Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745) was born and educated in Ireland, but moved to England in his early twenties, and became an ordained priest. In 'Gulliver's Travels', he created a book that has been one of the most consistently popular books written in the eighteenth century, and probably the finest prose satire in the English language.