Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal

First published in 1726, 'Gulliver's Travels' was an instant sensation and sold out its first print run in less than a week. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature. Lemuel Gulliver, 'first a surgeon, then a captain of several ships', is washed ashore after a shipwreck and awakes to find himself a prisoner of a race of people less than six inches tall, on the island of Lilliput. His adventures there, subsequent escape and further voyages are both a satire on human nature and the politics of the time, and a parody of the literary sub-genre of 'traveller s tales'. 'A Modest Proposal', published three years later, is Swift s classic satirical essay purporting to suggest that the impoverished Irish might ease their troubles by selling their children as food to the rich. It is widely held to be one of the greatest examples of sustained irony in the English language. Published together here are two of the greatest pieces of writing by the foremost prose satirist in the history English literature, with a new and incisive foreword by Jeremy Paxman.