Gullivers Travels, with eBook, Jonathan Swift
Gullivers Travels, with eBook, Jonathan Swift
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List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
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Gulliver's Travels, with eBook

Author: Jonathan Swift

Narrator: David Case

Unabridged: 10 hr 48 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 01/19/2009

Categories: Fiction, Classic

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

Shipwrecked and cast adrift, English surgeon Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself on Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people, whose height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His subsequent encounters—with the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the philosophical Houyhnhnms, and the brutish Yahoos—give him new, bitter insights into human behavior.

Jonathan Swift's savage satire views mankind in a distorted hall of mirrors as a diminished, magnified, and finally bestial species, presenting us with an uncompromising reflection of ourselves.

About Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift, an Irish author and journalist, is considered to have been the foremost prose satirist in the English language. Swift became insane in his last years, but until his death he was known as Dublin's foremost citizen. Swift's most famous work is Gulliver's Travels, where the stories of Gulliver's experiences among dwarfs and giants had such an air of authenticity and realism that many contemporary readers believed them to be true.

Swift was born in 1667 in Dublin, Ireland. His father died seven months before his son was born, and his mother had no private income to support her family. Swift was taken to England by his nurse, and at the age of four he was sent back to Ireland. Swift's mother returned to England, and she left her son to her wealthy brother-in-law, Uncle Godwin.

Swift studied at Trinity College in Dublin, where he earned a master's degree, even though he was not a very good student. When the anti-Catholic Revolution of 1688 aroused reaction in Ireland, Swift moved to England to the household of Sir William Temple at Moor Park, Surrey. He worked there as a secretary but did not like his position as a servant in the household. In 1695, Swift was ordained in the Church of Ireland (Anglican), Dublin.

After Temple's death in 1699, Swift returned to Ireland. He made several trips to London and gained fame with his essays. Throughout the reign of Queen Anne, Swift was one of the central characters in the literary and political life of London. From 1695 to 1696, Swift was the vicar of Kilroot. Between the years 1707 and 1709, Swift was an emissary for the Irish clergy in London, during which time he contributed to the "Bickerstaff Papers" and to the Tattler.

From 1713 to 1742, Swift was the dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral. It is thought that Swift suffered from Alzheimer's disease. Many considered him insane-however, from the beginning of his twentieth year, he suffered from deafness. Swift predicted his mental decay when he was about fifty. He died in Dublin on October 19, 1745, leaving behind a great mass of poetry and prose, chiefly in the form of pamphlets.
In addition to Gulliver's Travels, Swift's most famous works include The Battle of the Books, which explores the merits of the ancients and the moderns in literature; A Tale of a Tub, a religious satire;
Arguments Against Abolishing Christianity, an argument for the preservation of the Christian religion as a social necessity; Drapier's Letters; and A Modest Proposal.


Reviews

Goodreads review by emma on June 23, 2024

imagine if you lived in the 1700s and this was like...the most fun book available. screaming and crying. so grateful to live in a time when the only reason i read this book is because its cover is pretty, and not because i live a life of suffering and no running water and my idea of a raging good time......more

Goodreads review by Paul on March 19, 2012

Okay, I didn't finish this sucker. It was poor. I was kind of shocked. I was thinking why does no one point out that this is a giant rip off of Honey I Shrunk the Kids and Honey I Blew Up the Kid? It's painfully obvious. I don't see why this Danial Defoe mope has not had his ass sued, maybe he avoid......more

Goodreads review by Mario the lone bookwolf on July 07, 2023

Tiny manifestations of human social models One of the earliest forms of satire, just as Twains Yankee and Cervantes Don Quichote, but not that good [URL not allowed] [URL not allowed] That´s simply because Swift isn´t such a talented, solid writer as Cervan......more

Goodreads review by Vit on March 14, 2022

Lemuel Gulliver was the first who discovered the theory of relativity: he comprehended that everything in the world is relative therefore while amongst Lilliputians he is a giant, amongst Brobdingnagians he is a midget. Eccentricity excellently stands against the erosion of time – much better than an......more

Goodreads review by Tharindu on March 06, 2022

"The rats on board carried away one of my sheep;" "Care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man’s goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning;" It seems that I had a completely incorrect opinion of what Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travel......more