57 Fun Facts About Gulliver's Travels

In which year was Gulliver's Travels first published?

Gulliver's Travels was first published anonymously in London in October 1726 and was an immediate success, with imitations, parodies and 'keys' following within months.

What is Gulliver's first name?

The narrator is Lemuel Gulliver; the original title page presents him as the author, and the full title begins Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, In Four Parts.

What was Gulliver's profession before he became a ship's captain?

He sails as a ship's surgeon on the first voyages and only takes command of a merchantman in Part IV, out of boredom.

What is the name of the ship wrecked in a storm on Gulliver's first voyage?

The Antelope, under Captain William Prichard, sailed from Bristol in May 1699 and was driven by a violent storm to the north-west of Van Diemen's Land, today's Tasmania.

Roughly how tall are the Lilliputians?

The Lilliputians are less than 6 inches tall, roughly one-twelfth of human height, so everything in their land is scaled down by the same ratio.

What trivial question divides the two warring religious sects of Lilliput?

The sects fight over which end of a boiled egg to crack open: after a young prince cut his finger on the big end, an edict ordered every egg broken at the small end.

What are the two rival Lilliputian political parties, parodies of the Tories and Whigs, distinguished by?

The Tories were the High-Heels and the Whigs the Low-Heels; the emperor's heir hedges by wearing one heel higher than the other.

Which rival island nation's fleet does Gulliver capture for Lilliput?

Gulliver wades the 800-yard channel and tows away the fleet of Blefuscu, Lilliput's rival standing for France; his refusal to conquer it outright turns the emperor against him.

What unorthodox method does Gulliver use to put out a fire in the Lilliputian palace?

Gulliver urinates on the flames and puts the fire out in three minutes; the empress is so disgusted that the act is later listed among the articles of impeachment against him.

What punishment is Gulliver sentenced to in Lilliput before he escapes?

Gulliver is sentenced to blinding, urged by his friend Reldresal as a lenient alternative to death; the articles parody the impeachment of the Tory ministers Harley and Bolingbroke.

Which Lilliputian official is usually read as a caricature of Sir Robert Walpole?

Flimnap, the lord high treasurer, is read as Walpole: his rope-dancing for court favour mocks the Whig minister's political agility, and he later accuses Gulliver of an affair with his wife.

What is the name of the land of giants Gulliver reaches on his second voyage?

The word Brobdingnagian sits in the Oxford English Dictionary as a synonym for gigantic; the grass there is as tall as trees.

Roughly how tall is the farmer who finds Gulliver in the land of giants?

The giants are about twelve times human size, putting the farmer at about 72 feet; Gulliver says he looked as tall as an ordinary spire steeple and took about ten yards at every stride.

What is the name of the giant farmer's daughter who becomes Gulliver's nurse and companion?

Glumdalclitch, whose name means 'little nurse', is nine years old and, at not above forty feet, little for her age; she goes with Gulliver into the queen's service.

What does the farmer do with Gulliver before selling him to the queen?

The farmer exhibits Gulliver for money as a curiosity at inns and market towns, working him so hard he wastes away; fearing he will die, the farmer sells him to the queen.

What carries Gulliver's travelling box off and drops it into the sea, ending his stay among the giants?

A giant eagle seizes the travelling box by its ring and, harried by other eagles, drops it into the sea, where the crew of an English ship find Gulliver floating.

What especially horrifies the giant king in Gulliver's account of Europe?

James Gillray's 1803 print recast the scene with George III as the giant king peering at a tiny Napoleon.

What is Laputa, the setting of the third voyage?

Laputa is a flying island about four and a half miles across, held aloft by a giant lodestone set in an adamantine base and steered by tilting the magnet.

Which absurd project is under way at the Grand Academy of Lagado?

One projector has spent eight years extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, to be sealed in vials and let out to warm the air in raw summers; he begs Gulliver for money.

The Grand Academy of Lagado satirises which real institution?

The Academy of Projectors mocks the Royal Society, whose Philosophical Transactions reported experiments Swift found absurd; its impractical projectors leave Balnibarbi's fields in ruin.

On the island of Glubbdubdrib, whom does Gulliver converse with?

The magician summons Julius Caesar, Brutus, Homer, Aristotle and Descartes for a debate on ancients versus moderns.

What are the struldbrugs of Luggnagg?

They lack eternal youth, suffer every infirmity of age and are declared legally dead at eighty.

Which real country does Gulliver visit at the end of his third voyage?

In Japan Gulliver lands at Xamoschi and, posing as a Dutchman, asks the Emperor to excuse him from trampling on the crucifix, as Dutch traders were required to do.

What are the Houyhnhnms?

Swift inverts the old textbook definition of man as the rational animal by making horses reasonable and humans brutes.

What are the Yahoos?

The Yahoos are savage, filthy human-like creatures kept as beasts by the Houyhnhnms; Swift coined the word, which now means a crude, brutish person.

Why does Gulliver end up in the land of the horses?

The mutineers turn pirate; the horses' assembly later expels him as a dangerous Yahoo with a semblance of reason.

Which kindly Portuguese captain rescues Gulliver against his will at the end of the book?

Don Pedro de Mendez, captain of the Lisbon ship, treats Gulliver with great courtesy, lending him clothes and money; his generosity undercuts Gulliver's contempt for all humans.

How does Gulliver spend his time after returning home from his last voyage?

He cannot bear to live among 'Yahoos', avoids his wife and family and becomes a recluse.

Which captain of the Hopewell invites Gulliver aboard for his third voyage?

Captain William Robinson, a Cornishman commanding the Hopewell, had sailed with Gulliver before; he offers double the usual pay and a promise to follow Gulliver's advice on sea-affairs.

Which London publisher first issued the book, using five printing houses to beat pirates?

Benjamin Motte received the manuscript anonymously, dropped at his door from a coach at night, and published it in London after cutting the passages he judged most dangerous.

Why did Swift probably have the manuscript copied out by another hand?

Swift had the manuscript copied so his handwriting could not be used as evidence in a prosecution, a danger he had already faced over his Irish pamphlets.

Which circle of satirists, formed around 1713 with Pope, Gay and Arbuthnot, may have seeded the book?

Swift's job was to satirise the fashionable 'travellers' tales' genre; the club's imaginary author was Martinus Scriblerus.

Which poet added five verses on the book that Swift liked enough to include in the second edition?

Modern editions rarely print them; Pope was one of Swift's closest friends and his host in London.

Which fellow poet said the book was 'universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery'?

John Gay, author of The Beggar's Opera, wrote to Swift weeks after publication that the book was being read by everyone from the cabinet council to the nursery.

Which Victorian novelist attacked the book as 'blasphemous' for its harshness about human society?

William Thackeray, in his 1851 lectures on the English humourists, called the fourth part 'horrible, shameful, unmanly, blasphemous' for its contempt of mankind.

Which pair of computing terms for byte order comes straight from the Lilliputian egg quarrel?

Danny Cohen borrowed big-endian and little-endian from the Lilliputian egg war in his 1980 note 'On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace', since neither byte order is inherently better.

Which Hayao Miyazaki film takes its name and premise from Swift's Laputa?

Miyazaki's 1986 Castle in the Sky, released as Laputa: Castle in the Sky, takes its name from Swift's Laputa; a region of Mars's moon Phobos is also called Laputa Regio.

Which language, studied by Swift at Trinity College Dublin, may underlie his Lilliputian words?

Irving Rothman argued that Lilliputian words derive from Hebrew, which Swift studied at Trinity College Dublin; Isaac Asimov's annotated edition had dismissed decoding them as a waste of time.

Which composer wrote a Gulliver Suite for two violins with a Lilliputian chaconne?

Written in 1728-29, it also pairs a loure of the 'well-mannered houyhnhnms' with a fury of the 'naughty yahoos'.

Who starred as a modern-day Gulliver in the 2010 film version?

Jack Black plays Gulliver as a newspaper mail-room clerk who plagiarises travel writing to win an assignment; Emily Blunt played the Lilliputian princess.

Which actor played Gulliver in the 1996 television miniseries?

Ted Danson starred as Gulliver in the 1996 two-part television miniseries, with Mary Steenburgen, his real-life wife, playing Mary Gulliver.

Which pioneering French filmmaker made a silent Gulliver film in 1902?

Georges Méliès made Le Voyage de Gulliver à Lilliput et chez les géants in 1902, using trick photography to shrink and enlarge actors; Fleischer's animated feature followed in 1939.

What position did Swift hold at St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, from 1713?

Swift was installed as Dean of St Patrick's in June 1713, a post he held until his death in 1745; he had hoped for an English bishopric but Queen Anne reportedly disliked A Tale of a Tub.

Under which pseudonym did Swift write his letters attacking Wood's copper coinage for Ireland?

As M. B. Drapier, a supposed Dublin draper, Swift wrote seven letters in 1724-25 that rallied Ireland against the coinage and made him a national hero; a £300 reward to unmask the author went unclaimed.

What was Swift's nickname for Esther Johnson, the girl he tutored at Moor Park and was buried beside?

Swift called Esther Johnson Stella, addressing his Journal to Stella to her; 'Vanessa' was his name for the other Esther, Esther Vanhomrigh.

Which condition, marked by fits of vertigo, plagued Swift throughout his life?

Ménière's disease, an inner-ear disorder causing vertigo and deafness, is the accepted retrospective diagnosis for the giddiness Swift first suffered around 1690 and complained of for fifty years.

In what order did Swift actually write the four parts?

The third voyage, the grab-bag of Laputa and its neighbours, was the last written, in 1724.

What was Swift's stated aim in writing the book?

In a 1725 letter to Pope, Swift wrote that the chief end of all his labours was 'to vex the world rather than divert it'; readers were delighted anyway.

Which 1735 Irish edition, based on Charles Ford's annotated copy, is Gulliver's authoritative text?

George Faulkner's Dublin edition of Swift's Works restored passages the London printer had cut and softened, following corrections Swift's friend Charles Ford had entered in his own copy.

What is the capital of Lilliput?

Mildendo, the Lilliputian capital, is an exact square five hundred feet on each side, with walls two and a half feet high; Gulliver steps over the western gate to view it.

The Lilliputians measure time in what unit?

The war with the neighbouring island has run for 'six and thirty moons', and the emperor is 'past his prime' before thirty.

The rebellion of the city of Lindalino against Laputa in Part III is an allegory for what?

Lindalino stands for Dublin; the passage was cut by early publishers and only restored in 1899.

What is the name of the ship on which Gulliver reaches the land of giants?

The Adventure, under Captain John Nicholas and bound for Surat, was driven off course by storms; sent ashore for water, Gulliver is left behind when his shipmates flee a giant.

To which 'cousin' is the 1735 prefatory letter complaining of Motte's changes addressed?

The letter is addressed to Richard Sympson, the fictional cousin who supposedly arranged publication; Gulliver complains the text was so altered that 'I do hardly know mine own work'.

Gulliver's Travels came out seven years after which optimistic novel by Defoe?

Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, the castaway novel, came first; critic Warren Montag reads Swift's book as a rebuttal of its faith in the self-sufficient individual who precedes society.

What is the main port of Balnibarbi, where Gulliver waits for a ship to Luggnagg?

Maldonada, Balnibarbi's chief port, is where Gulliver waits a month for a ship to Luggnagg, filling the time with a side trip to the sorcerers' island of Glubbdubdrib.

Which scheme is pursued by a projector at the Grand Academy of Lagado?

One projector works at softening marble for pillows and pin-cushions; others mix paint by smell or hunt conspiracies by examining suspects' excrement.