Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World In four parts. By Lemuel Gulliver...

London: Printed for Benj. Motte, 1726. Full Description:

[SWIFT, Jonathan]. Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, first a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships. London: Printed for Benj. Motte, 1726.

First edition, Mixed issue. Volume I is Teerink AA, and Volume II is Teerink B. Four parts in two octavo volumes (7 9/16 x 4 11/16 inches; 192 x 120). xii, 148; [6], 164; [6], 154; [8], [155]-353, [1, blank] pp. Engraved frontispiece portrait of Gulliver in the second state (the first state, usually only seen in large paper copies), with the inscription “Captain Lemuel Gulliver of (truncated) Redriff. Ætat. suæ LVIII.” around the oval the tablet bearing a Latin inscription (printed on paper with vertical chain-lines), five engraved maps (two for Part III and one for each of the other Parts), and an engraved plate of symbols in Part III. With engraved head and tail pieces, and initials.

Uniformly bound in contemporary full paneled speckled calf, rebacked to style. Boards ruled in blind. Spine stamped and numbered in gilt. Red morocco spine labels, lettered in gilt. Top edges dyed brown, other edges speckled red. A small piece missing to fore-edge margin of leaf K5 in part II, volume I, but with no loss. Previous owner's old ink neat notes to leaf S5 in Part IV, volume II. Previous owner's bookplates to front pastedown of each volumes. A handsome and complete copy of this seminal first edition.

Gulliver’s Travels, to use the popular title, is one of the greatest satires in the English language—or any language, for that matter. It was an immediate success, which accounts in part for its bibliographical complexity, and has been hailed as a book that “would last as long as the language, because it described the vices of man in all nations” (D.N.B.).

“Gulliver’s Travels has given Swift an immortality beyond temporary fame...All those who had been fascinated by the realism and vivid detail of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe were captivated again, even though they knew that Gulliver must be fiction. The brilliance and thoroughness with which his logic and invention work out the picquancies of scale involved by the giant human among the Lilliputians, and then by a minikin Gulliver among the Brobdingnagians, ran away with the author’s original intention. Gulliver’s Travels has achieved the final apotheosis of a satirical fable, but it has also become a tale for children. For every edition designed for the reader with an eye to the historical background, twenty have appeared, abridged or adapted, for readers who care nothing for the satire and enjoy it as a first-class story” (Printing and the Mind of Man).

Grolier, 100 English, 42. Printing and the Mind of Man 185. Rothschild 2108. Teerink 290, 291.

HBS 69061.

$8,500. (Inventory #: 69061)