This October marks three hundred years since Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels first exploded onto the world, in all its scabrous, coarse brilliance. It’s a strange book: a melange of journey narratives, utopias, satire, proto-science-fiction and fantasy, which renders its success all the more unusual.

Dean Swift (a notable man of letters and an anarchic Tory) was a playful chap. He arranged its publication pseudonymously, with the help of Alexander Pope. Yet it did not take long for Swift’s authorship to come out; even before then, the first edition sold hotter than hot cakes, reprinting within a week. Eventually, it became one of the most reprinted works in history. Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts by Lemuel Gulliver (to give it its proper title) was, according to John Gay, ‘universally read, from the Cabinet-council to the Nursery’.

We petty, puling humans will always be part Yahoo, part Houyhnhnm

We petty, puling humans will always be part Yahoo, part Houyhnhnm

And therein lies its peculiar, rollicking appeal. Everyone can enjoy it. A reader’s relationship with Gulliver’s Travels moves from initial childlike wonder to a riper understanding of the book’s political and satirical intents. Where children marvel at the giant King of Brobdingnag, adults may recognise a portrait of Swift’s one-time patron, Sir William Temple.

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© The Spectator