_LONDON:_
_Printed for_ BENJ. MOTTE, _at the
Middle_ Temple-Gate _in_ Fleet-Street.
MDCCXXVI.
FACSIMILE OF THE TITLE PAGE
OF THE FIRST EDITION OF "GULLIVER'S TRAVELS"
ISSUED IN 1726, WHICH SCORED AS GREAT
A POPULAR SUCCESS AS DEFOE'S
"ROBINSON CRUSOE"]
In _Gulliver's Travels_ Swift wrote several stories of the adventures of
an Englishman who was cast away on the shores of Lilliput, a country
whose people were only six inches tall; then upon Brobdingnag, a land
inhabited by giants sixty feet high; then upon Laputa, a flying island,
and finally upon the land of the Houyhnhnms, where the horse rules and
man is represented by a degenerate creature known as a Yahoo, who serves
the horse as a slave. In the first two stories Gulliver's satire is
amusing, but the picture of the old people in Laputa who cannot die and
of the Yahoos, who have every detestable vice, are so bitter that they
repel any except morbid readers. Yet the style never lacks clearness,
simplicity and force, and one feels in reading these tales that he is
listening to the voice of a master of the English tongue.
_Bibliography_
_Notes on the Historical and Best Reading Editions of Great Authors._
_In this bibliography no attempt has been made to give complete guides
to the various books. In fact, to give the Bible alone its due would
require all the space that is allotted here to the thirteen great books
discussed in this volume. All that has been attempted is to furnish the
reader lists of the historical editions that are noteworthy, with others
which are best adapted for use, as well as any commentaries that are
especially helpful to the reader who has small leisure._
_In securing cheap editions of good books the reader of today has a
decided advantage over the reader of five years ago, for in these years
have appeared two well-edited libraries of general literature that not
only furnish accurate texts, well printed and substantially bound, but
furnish these at merely nominal prices. The first is Everyman's Library,
issued in this country by E. P. Dutton & Company of New York. It
comprises the best works from all departments of literature selected by
a committee of English scholars, headed by Ernest Rhys, the editor of
the Library. Associated with him were Lord Avebury, George Saintsbury,
Sir Oliver Lodge, Andrew Lang, Stopford Brooke, Hilaire Belloc, Gilbert
K. Chesterton, A. C. Swinburne and Dr. Richard Garnett. The result is a
collection of good literature, each volume prefaced with a short but
scholarly introduction. The price is 35 cents in cloth and 70 cents in
leather._
_The other series is known as the People's Library, and is issued by the
Cassell Company of London and New York. This Library is sold at the
remarkably low price of 25 cents a volume, well printed and fairly bound
in cloth._