01
Literature
One of the most influential prose satires in the English language, repeatedly adapted, abridged, translated and reimagined.
First published in 1726, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels remains at once an adventure story, a political satire, a philosophical provocation and a work that changed the visual imagination of generations of readers.
Why Gulliver matters
More than a story about little people
Swift used impossible voyages to expose very real human behaviour. The book examines politics, war, science, pride, colonialism, education and the instability of supposedly civilized society.
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Politics
Lilliput's ceremonies, factions and wars reduce political grandeur to absurdity and reveal the pettiness beneath public power.
03
Language
Words such as “Lilliputian” and “Yahoo” escaped the novel and entered ordinary speech.
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Visual culture
The image of Gulliver tied to the ground became more widely remembered than many details of the text itself.
The most famous image in Gulliver's Travels did not appear in the first edition.
The birth of an icon
From text to image
1726
First publication
Benjamin Motte publishes the original London edition. It contains a portrait, maps and a diagram, but no narrative illustrations of Gulliver's adventures.
1727
The Hague
French and Dutch translations appear with the earliest full-page copperplate illustrations.
1727
Paris
A different visual tradition presents Gulliver at a slightly later moment in the same episode.
1727/28
London
Motte's illustrated English edition uses one plate to combine several moments into a vertical visual narrative.
The exhibition
Three early visual traditions
Full image on the left with inset zoom in on the right.
Edition 01
The Hague
1727 · The earliest illustrated Gulliver
The French and Dutch editions published in The Hague shared a set of four unsigned copperplates, one for each voyage. In the first plate Gulliver lies on the ground, apparently still asleep, while the Lilliputians climb ladders and continue the process of securing him.
The image does more than illustrate one instant. The city previews Gulliver's destination, while the ship, overturned boat, paddle and swimmer in the distance visually explain how he arrived.
- Gulliver Eyes closed; still being restrained.
- Foreground Hat, armed Lilliputians and ladders.
- Distance City, coastline, ship and traces of the wreck.
- Visual method Past, present and future compressed into one landscape.
Full image on the left with inset zoom in on the right.
Edition 02
Paris
1727 · A later moment in the story
The Paris plate is not simply a copy of the Hague image. Gulliver's eyes are open, cords hang from his wrist and one arm has broken partly free. The illustration therefore depicts a slightly later textual moment.
The sea fills the foreground, Gulliver occupies the centre and the metropolis rises behind him. Read from bottom to top, the plate becomes a three-part visual sequence: arrival, captivity and destination.
- Gulliver Awake, struggling and partly loosened.
- Foreground Sea as the path of arrival.
- Background Mountainous cityscape.
- Visual method Three narrative stages stacked in depth.
Full image on the left with inset zoom in on the right.
Edition 03
London
Dated 1727 · Probably issued in 1728
Benjamin Motte's illustrated English edition differs most dramatically. Rather than concentrating on one landscape, its first plate combines three distinct episodes in a tall, planar sequence.
At the bottom Gulliver is fed while still bound. In the middle he is transported toward the metropolis on a wheeled carriage. At the top he sits chained beside the ancient temple as the emperor approaches.
- Lower scene Gulliver fed by the Lilliputians.
- Middle scene Transport on the enormous carriage.
- Upper scene The temple, city and approaching emperor.
- Visual method Three moments arranged vertically like a storyboard.
Look closely
The same story, three different moments
| Feature | The Hague | Paris | London |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gulliver's state | Asleep or not yet awake | Awake and partly free | Shown across several later episodes |
| Composition | Deep landscape | Sea, captive and city in three layers | Three stacked narrative scenes |
| Shipwreck | Ship, boat, paddle and swimmer visible | Sea present, but no detailed wreck | Not the main subject |
| City | Previewed in the distance | Prominent behind Gulliver | Appears in the upper scene |
| Lasting contribution | Established the captive image | Reinterpreted its narrative timing | Turned the episode into a sequence |
The Hague copy's unexpected third volume
More Gulliver, but not by Swift
The displayed Hague copy is bound with an additional volume of supposed voyages, including a second voyage to Brobdingnag and a journey to Sevarambia. These were not written by Jonathan Swift.
The volume reflects the speed with which publishers attempted to profit from the extraordinary success of Gulliver's Travels. By attaching invented adventures to the genuine work, the publishers created an early example of unauthorized literary continuation, commercial imitation and bibliographical confusion.
A physical change of scale
A ship from Gulliver's world
Beside the books is a hand-built scale model of a British warship representing a vessel of the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. The model itself is old and was probably made by hand during the nineteenth century.
To us it is a small model. To an inhabitant of Lilliput, however, it would appear to be a full-sized warship. Its masts, guns, rigging and hull would possess the same overwhelming scale that Gulliver possessed when he first lay on the shore.
The ship therefore joins the engravings as an interpretive object. The images show us how early artists pictured Gulliver. The model asks us to reverse the perspective and imagine how the Lilliputians might have pictured his world.
Imagine...
You are standing on the shore of Lilliput. A vessel like this appears beyond the harbour. It is not a model. It is a towering machine built by giants from somewhere beyond the horizon.
A 19th Century wooden handmade model of a 17th Century British Battleship
The engravings taught generations what Gulliver looked like. The ship model invites us to imagine what the world looked like through the eyes of the Lilliputians.Three Hundred Years of Gulliver's Travels
Further reading
Sources and acknowledgements
- Russell Palmer, “Illustrating Gulliver and the Lilliputians in 1727 and 1728,” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, vol. 34, no. 4, 2021, pp. 311–318.
- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, first published by Benjamin Motte in London in 1726.
- Bibliographical information concerning the Hague copy and its additional spurious volume has been compared with antiquarian descriptions and standard Swift bibliography.
- Interpretation of the displayed ship is based on its physical form and apparent age. Its precise maker and date remain under research.