A fantastical tale, Gulliver’s Travels tells the story of the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, an English ship’s surgeon. First, he is shipwrecked in the land of Lilliput, where the alarmed residents are only six inches tall. His second voyage takes him to the land of Brobdingnag, where the people are sixty feet tall. Further adventures bring Gulliver to an island that floats in the sky, and to a land where horses are endowed with reason and beasts are shaped like men.

Read by children as an adventure story and by adults as a devastating satire of society, Gulliver’s Travels remains a fascinating blend of travelogue, realism, symbolism, and fantastic voyage — all with a serious philosophical intent.