Burnside Rare Books

[Gulliver's Travels] Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships.

[Swift, Jonathan]; Lemuel Gulliver [Pseudonym]

London: Printed for Benjamin Motte at the Middle Temple-Gate in Fleet-street, 1726.

Second edition, also referred to as the second printing of the first edition, in two volumes. Both volumes conform to Teerink's 'AA' edition, with frontispiece portrait in second state, apart from one point: Volume II title page conforms to "A" edition, without "Second Edition." The rest of the volume is "AA" with parts individually paginated and misprints in place.

xii, 148, [vi], 164; [vi], 154, [viii], 199 pp. Numbers of pp. 62 and 63 in fourth part switched; text unaffected. Laid paper, complete with 7 plates including frontis. Cambridge binding in full morocco, elaborately stamped in gilt and blind, each board identical with a floral pattern to the central panel. All edges gilt. Fine condition with no sunning and very little wear to covers. Offsetting from turn-ins to free endpapers, previous owner name to fly-leaf of first volume. Contents have very minimal foxing and toning. Tiny bookworm hole near lower page edge through first half of Volume II, professionally repaired tear to upper corner of pages 137/8 in same.

One of the most famous novels in the Western canon. The Anglo-Irish priest Jonathan Swift published under various pseudonyms, Lemuel Gulliver being the chosen name for this novel, which purports to be a memoir of Gulliver’s encounters with fantastical people in distant lands. The satire of British society was an instant success; some disparaged the book and many praised it, but everyone read it. The first printing sold out in a week and two more editions were published the same year. Those first three editions, almost identical, have been designated by the bibliographer Herman Teerink as A, AA, and B. Keen to preserve his anonymity, Swift dealt with his London publisher Benjamin Motte via post and intermediary. He did not read the proofs and complained afterward that his text had been mangled, and Motte’s “Second Edition” (actually his fourth) of 1727 included some hundred minor revisions, marking the first significant change to the text.

Mistakes there may have been, but there is no doubt that Motte’s Gulliver’s Travels was a handsome publication, well ornamented with decorative head- and tail-pieces. The maps were taken (with some confusion as to scale) from the work of Herman Moll, a leading cartographer of the day and a man mentioned by name in the novel. This copy is suitably housed in a stunning binding signed by Bumpus of Oxford St, a London department store known for the quality bindings of its books. The actual work was done by leading binderies like Riviere & Son and Sangorski & Sutcliffe; it is unknown which firm took on this commission. A beautiful set. Teerink 290, Printing and the Mind of Man 185. Item #140947851

Price: $17,500