"Gulliver's Travels" published: Bristol, May 4, 1699: the surgeon Gulliver sails towards the West Indies but a storm makes him shipwreck on the island of Lilliput; he wakes up the next morning on the beach, tied all over his body and surrounded by little men, who appear like ants in front of him.
Thus begins the first of a series of adventures told in Gulliver's Travels, a masterpiece by the Irish writer Jonathan Swift, published in London on October 26, 1726. The publication was edited by the publisher Benjamin Motte, who secretly received the manuscript, the whose author was behind the pseudonym Dr Lemuel Gulliver.
Cleaned by the publisher himself of the most controversial passages, the book appeared to be an adventure novel, disguising, in a not so veiled way, a salacious allegory of the society of the time, of the English system in particular. In a week the first edition was snapped up, projecting the work among the classics of the genre.
Only later, and thanks to the numerous changes made with respect to the original text, it was made a novel for children, a source of inspiration for films and cartoons. The most popular film adaptation dates back to 1960 (two Oscar nominations), by the director Max Fleischer; the most recent is from 2010.