Audiobook · read by volunteers
Gulliver's Travels
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
Read by Lizzie Driver · 40 chapters · 11 h 10
About the book
Lemuel Gulliver is a ship's surgeon with a restless nature and a talent for shipwreck. His first voyage lands him among the tiny people of Lilliput, whose petty quarrels and grand ceremonies he watches from above. The second takes him to Brobdingnag, where he is a creature the size of a toy among giants. Later voyages lead to a flying island of scholars, a land of immortals and a country ruled by wise horses. Behind the comic inventions, Jonathan Swift mounts a savage and brilliant satire on politics, science and human pride. The result has delighted children and unsettled adults for nearly three hundred years. Forty chapters and eleven hours of voyaging make this a classic to savour.
Introduction
Jonathan Swift lived from 1667 to 1745. Born in Dublin, he was a clergyman, essayist and satirist who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, and who wrote with fierce wit about the politics and religion of his time. His other works include A Modest Proposal and A Tale of a Tub.
Gulliver's Travels, whose full title is Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, was first published in 1726 and amended in 1735. It is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the travellers' tales that were then very popular. It is widely considered Swift's masterpiece and his most celebrated work, as well as one of the indisputable classics of English literature. Each of the four voyages shows human society from a different angle, and changes the scale or the standard of judgement so that familiar institutions look strange and absurd.
The book has been adapted many times, often as a children's story that includes only the first voyage. The complete text is considerably darker and more argumentative, and its last part in particular poses uncomfortable questions about reason and human nature.
The LibriVox recording is read by a single volunteer and divides into forty chapters, beginning with an introduction. It lasts about eleven hours. Why listen? Because Swift's satire still bites, and the invention of its worlds is a constant delight. Heard aloud, his dry, level tone makes the most outrageous inventions sound entirely plausible.
Public domain
Jonathan Swift died in 1745: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text