harpercollinspublishers harper press collins classics imprint uk p/b printing
at least fifteen elsewise undated near-identical printings
cover art mary evans picture library (gulliver's belongings are taken by the townfolk of lilliput, 1726)
cover price (none)
336pp. including (partly unpaginated) i-xii pp. titles, indica, history of collins (nf), life & times (nf) gerard cheshire, table-of-contents; 32 end pp: 28pp. classic literature: words and phrases (nf: adapted from the collins english dictionary), 4 blank pp.
fiction contents: a voyage to lilliput; a voyage to brobdingnag; a voyage to laputa, balnibarbi, glubbdubdribb, luggnag, and japan; a voyage to the country of the houyhnhnms (this comment is from another edition of this book)
ReviewYou have to be very careful with which edition of this work you get...
It's one of those stories that has a timeless and general appeal, and has been taught in schools for many years.
And this has meant it has had to have some real editing down to make it appropriate for younger minds.
In schools, most of the book is missing, mainly for reasons that after he's been small in a large world, and large in small world... the point has been felt to have been made adequately, and the rest deemed unnecessary.
In this way it offers a boldly drawn story that would catch the younger reader's imagination, but this was originally written as biting satire, both social and political, and the "further adventures of Mr Gulliver" that are usually omitted serve to hammer home this point... and Swift pulls no punches in doing so, often in quite a Bawdy way too (he pisses on the lilliput palace to put out a fire there in one scene - the politically satirical point there rather unceremoniously made)... so all of this has had to have been "disappeared" too, to make it appropriate for younger ages.
This edition is the unedited - "complete, and unabridged" variety, aimed at an older reader... so another edition of the edited kind should be sought for younger readers.
Sing along now:
"There's Lilliput and Brobdingnang, the Laputans, Balnibarbi and Luggnagg, Glubbdubbdrib and Houyhnhnms and..............
..................... Japan (!?!)"
(A few more besides too - Haven't quite worked out the rhyme yet, but I'm sure there's a song in there somewhere along the lines of that song about the elements)
(((Oooh, almost forgot, it does contain what is thought to be one of, if not the earliest descriptions of a calculating machine... a computer. (And a floating city too, which is always good!)))) (this review is from another edition of this book)