Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World.: In Four Parts by Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships [with] Vol. II [and] Vol. III.

London: for Benj. Motte,, 1726 & 1727. I winked at my own littleness, as people do at their own faults Third edition, Teerink's B edition, published only a couple of months after the first, together with the spurious third volume published the following year. This is a remarkably attractive set, uniformly bound in a well-preserved unrestored contemporary English binding. The first edition was published on 28 October 1726. Two superficially similar but distinct octavo editions followed in quick succession: the second (designated AA by Teerink) sometime in the middle of November, and the third edition (Teerink B) in December. A third volume, in two parts, appeared later in 1727; the first part is an original imitation of Swift's work, the second is an adaptation of Siden's The History of the Sevarites or Sevarambi (London, 1675-9). Gulliver's Travels "is the book by which Swift is chiefly remembered, and it is the record of his own experience in politics under Queen Anne as an Irishman in what G. B. Shaw called 'John Bull's other island'" (ODNB). The printing was chiefly managed by Alexander Pope, Swift's long-time friend. About a year before the first publication, discussing with Pope the progress he had made in "finishing, correcting, amending, and transcribing my Travels", Swift famously confessed: "the chief end I propose to myself in all my labours is to vex the world rather than divert it" (Swift, p. 434). The portrait occurs in three states, the first with the inscription "Captain Lemuel Gulliver, of Redriff Aetat. Suae 58." on a tablet under the oval (Gulliver's age matches Swift's age when the Travels was first published.) The second state, as here, has the inscription placed round the oval, the tablet with a quotation from the second satire of Persius, protesting the author's purity of heart; the third state is a retouched version of the second. Provenance: from the library of the Ricasoli-Firidolfi family, one of the earliest and most prominent noble families of Florence, with their 19th-century armorial bookplate in each volume and their numbered shelf labels to spines. Three volumes, octavo (196 x 123 mm). Contemporary panelled calf, spines with raised bands, red morocco labels, board edges tooled in gilt, edges sprinkled red and brown. Housed in a brown cloth flat-back box by the Chelsea Bindery. Engraved portrait frontispiece, 5 similar maps, and 1 diagram. Extremities rubbed, spine ends and corners worn, joints of vols. I and II cracked but holding, joints of vol. III with short splits at head and foot, but firm, contents browned, occasional foxing, otherwise clean. A very good set. ESTC T139452 and T139029; Printing and the Mind of Man 185 (first. ed.); Teerink 291 and 292. Jonathan Swift, Correspondence, 1999.