SWIFT, Jonathan]. Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In four parts. By Lemuel Gulliver. London: Benj. Motte, 1726.
SWIFT, Jonathan]. Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In four parts. By Lemuel Gulliver. London: Benj. Motte, 1726. 2 volumes, 8° (199 x 121mm). Engraved frontispiece portrait by Sheppard after Sturt, first state. 6 engraved plates. (Some generally light spotting, waterstaining to quires I-L at end of vol. 1, also to quires A-C and one map at beginning of vol. 2, D8 of vol. 2 holed at margin.) Contemporary calf, covers with blind fillet and blind roll border (rebacked, preserving gilt compartments of old spine, some staining to covers); late 19th-century calf solander case. Provenance : “Proprus se vindicat armis” (legend on spine, surrounding a centaur); Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919; booklabel and inscription); Beverly Chew (1850-1924; booklabel); Harry Glemby (booklabel); Carl H. Pforzheimer Library; Gerald E Slater (his sale, Christie’s New York, 12 February, 1982, lot 185). FIRST EDITION OF SWIFT’S MASTERPIECE , published 28 October 1726. The clandestine business of getting it into print was managed chiefly by Pope, with the assistance of John Gay and Erasmus Lewis. Unauthorised deletions and insertions were made by Andrew Tooke, and five printing houses were used to rush it into print and avoid piracy. The work was sold out within a week, a favourite with everyone "from the Cabinet-council to the Nursery" (Letter from Gay to Swift, 7 November 1726, Corr . iii. 728). No other English prose work is so multi-faceted. Of its time and timeless, it succeeds as a Scriblerian satire, burlesque travelogue, moral fable, anti-novel, adventure in science fiction, a uniquely loved children’s book, and personal psychodrama. One of its great qualities is the kind of verisimilitude normally associated with Defoe. In contrast to Defoe, however, the world which Swift makes believable is one of exalted fantasy. On 17 November, 1726, he wrote to Pope from Dublin about the public response to Gulliver , mentioning that “A Bishop here said, that book was full of improbable lies, and for his part, he hardly believed a word of it” ( Corr . iii. 56). The work remains “absolutely original, unequaled, unexampled”, words which Pope, in a letter to Lord Orrery, applied to all of Swift’s writings (A. Pope, Corr . iv. 59). This is Teerink's A edition, with the portrait in first state, G6 and 2E8 in vol. II cancels as usual, pt. 1 p. 35 with “Subsidies” correctly spelt, pt. 3 with chapter VII misnumbered V, and p. 74 misnumbered 44, pt. 4 p. 52 with “buth is” not “but his”. AN UNWASHED COPY IN A CONTEMPORARY BINDING, OF GREATLY DISTINGUISHED PROVENANCE . Grolier/English 42; PMM 185; Rothschild 2104; Teerink 289.
SWIFT, Jonathan]. Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In four parts. By Lemuel Gulliver. London: Benj. Motte, 1726.
SWIFT, Jonathan]. Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In four parts. By Lemuel Gulliver. London: Benj. Motte, 1726. 2 volumes, 8° (199 x 121mm). Engraved frontispiece portrait by Sheppard after Sturt, first state. 6 engraved plates. (Some generally light spotting, waterstaining to quires I-L at end of vol. 1, also to quires A-C and one map at beginning of vol. 2, D8 of vol. 2 holed at margin.) Contemporary calf, covers with blind fillet and blind roll border (rebacked, preserving gilt compartments of old spine, some staining to covers); late 19th-century calf solander case. Provenance : “Proprus se vindicat armis” (legend on spine, surrounding a centaur); Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919; booklabel and inscription); Beverly Chew (1850-1924; booklabel); Harry Glemby (booklabel); Carl H. Pforzheimer Library; Gerald E Slater (his sale, Christie’s New York, 12 February, 1982, lot 185). FIRST EDITION OF SWIFT’S MASTERPIECE , published 28 October 1726. The clandestine business of getting it into print was managed chiefly by Pope, with the assistance of John Gay and Erasmus Lewis. Unauthorised deletions and insertions were made by Andrew Tooke, and five printing houses were used to rush it into print and avoid piracy. The work was sold out within a week, a favourite with everyone "from the Cabinet-council to the Nursery" (Letter from Gay to Swift, 7 November 1726, Corr . iii. 728). No other English prose work is so multi-faceted. Of its time and timeless, it succeeds as a Scriblerian satire, burlesque travelogue, moral fable, anti-novel, adventure in science fiction, a uniquely loved children’s book, and personal psychodrama. One of its great qualities is the kind of verisimilitude normally associated with Defoe. In contrast to Defoe, however, the world which Swift makes believable is one of exalted fantasy. On 17 November, 1726, he wrote to Pope from Dublin about the public response to Gulliver , mentioning that “A Bishop here said, that book was full of improbable lies, and for his part, he hardly believed a word of it” ( Corr . iii. 56). The work remains “absolutely original, unequaled, unexampled”, words which Pope, in a letter to Lord Orrery, applied to all of Swift’s writings (A. Pope, Corr . iv. 59). This is Teerink's A edition, with the portrait in first state, G6 and 2E8 in vol. II cancels as usual, pt. 1 p. 35 with “Subsidies” correctly spelt, pt. 3 with chapter VII misnumbered V, and p. 74 misnumbered 44, pt. 4 p. 52 with “buth is” not “but his”. AN UNWASHED COPY IN A CONTEMPORARY BINDING, OF GREATLY DISTINGUISHED PROVENANCE . Grolier/English 42; PMM 185; Rothschild 2104; Teerink 289.
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