Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Regions of the World by Jonathan Swift

Gulliver's Travels was published in 1726; and, although it was by no means

intended for them, the book was soon appropriated by the children, who have

ever since continued to regard it as one of the most delightful of their story

books. They cannot comprehend the occasion which provoked the book nor

appreciate the satire which underlies the narrative, but they delight in the

wonderful adventures, and wander full of open-eyed astonishment into the

new worlds through which the vivid and logically accurate imagination of the

author so personally conducts them. And there is a meaning and a moral in the

stories of the Voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag which is entirely apart

from the political satire they are intended to convey, a meaning and a moral

which the youngest child who can read it will not fail to seize, and upon

which it is scarcely necessary for the teacher to comment.

For young children the book combines in a measure the interest of

Robinson Crusoe and that of the fairy tale; its style is objective, the narrative

is simple, and the matter appeals strongly to the childish imagination. For

more mature boys and girls and for adults the interest is found chiefly in the

keen satire which underlies the narrative.