Books

E. M. Forster's personal copy of the very scarce fifth edition of Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels'. The very scarce fifth edition of Jonathan Swift's fantastical novel about the adventures of Lemuel Gulliver in Lilliput, with a wonderful literary association.From the library of Nobel Prize for Literature nominated English novelist E. M. Forster, best known for works including 'A Room with a View', 'Howards End' and 'A Passage to India'.Illustrated with six plates of maps. Collated, complete.With E. M. Forster's bookplate to the head of the front free endpaper, and the armorial bookplate of his aunt, Laura Mary Forster (1839-1924), to the front pastedown. Laura passed much of her library on to her nephew, an intellectual known for her philanthropic activity, and for maintaining correspondences with William Morris and Henriette Darwin, Charles Darwin's eldest daughter.In his biography of his another aunt, Marianne Thornton, Forster described Laura with the passage: 'she followed the Thornton pattern of intellectual and philanthropic activity, but she could be censorious of her elders, and is constantly taking them up and dusting them before she replaces them, with a word of c0mmendation, on their shelf. In her later life she changed became gentler, wiser, greater'.ESTC reference numberT51599. This was simultaneously issued as volume thirteen of the Bathurst edition of Swift's works, which were published between 1745 and 1747.With the former owner's inscription R. Coke to the head of the front pastedown, and the inscription of Mr. Richards to the recto of a front blank.First published in 1726, immediately successful and now a classic of English Literature, Swift claimed he wrote the novel 'to vex the world rather than divert it'. Rebacked, in a full calf binding with gilt detailing to back strip. Original boards restored, retaining the original endpapers. Externally, lovely. Former owner's inscription and armorial bookplate to front pastedown, with name label to front free endpaper. Internally, firmly bound. Light spotting to perimeters of title page, with pages otherwise clean and bright. Very Good Indeed.

Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known as Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), is a prose satire by Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, satirizing both human nature and the 'travellers' tales' literary subgenre.