"Gulliver's Travels comprising the Voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag", by Dean (Jonathan) Swift, with explanatory and critical footnotes, embellished with woodcut illustrations, published by Leavitt & Allen, New York 1856.

Hard boards, tan cloth boards with gilt lettering and decoration on the front and spine [heavy wear: see photos]; 4" x 6.1/4"; former owner name and '1880' inside front cover and penciled name on half title page, no endpapers; 310 pages illustrated throughout with several woodcut engravings, a few page corner folds, some soiling, good+ condition.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Anglo-Irish satirist, considered one of the greatest masters of English prose. Among Swift's earliest prose work was "The Battle of the Books" (1704), a burlesque of the controversy then raging in literary circles over the relative merits of ancient and modern writers. His "Tale of a Tub" (1704) is the most amusing of his satirical works and the most strikingly original.

Swift's masterpiece, "Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World", more popularly titled "Gulliver's Travels", was published anonymously in 1726; it met with instant success. Swift's satire was originally intended as an allegorical and acidic attack on the vanity and hypocrisy of contemporary courts, statesmen, and political parties, but in the writing of his book, which is presumed to have taken more than six years, he incorporated his ripest reflections on human society. Nonetheless, it is so imaginatively, wittily, and simply written that the first book became and has remained a favorite children's story.

US: Priority (c.2-4 days) ------------- $18.50
Canada: Priority (c.1-3 weeks) ---- $32.50
World: Priority (c.2-4 weeks) ----- $45.50