This chapter explores the uneasy relationship between Gulliver’s Travels and scholarship on the development of the English novel during the eighteenth century. The chapter argues that to approach the miscellaneous Gulliver’s Travels with a rigid and absolute conception of genre is to overlook Swift’s engagement with a range of new and old fictional modes. Placing Swift in context means recognising the doubtful applicability to Gulliver of retrospectively formulated assumptions about the novel, including consistency of character. The final section of the chapter looks beyond Gulliver to consider the novelistic qualities of A Tale of a Tub and the lesser-known Memoirs of Capt. John Creichton.

The Voyage to Brobdingnag reduces Gulliver from the magnanimous and principled behemoth of the Voyage to Lilliput to a risible and contemptible little beast. The first section considers how Gulliver is diminished to an inconsequential creature, objectified and commodified by the giants who handle him as a freak show exhibit or a pet. The second section contends that Gulliver does recuperate his human identity, albeit in a precarious manner, by differentiating himself from animals he encounters in Brobdingnag. However, he is confronted with the disgusting physicality of humans, making his restitution of human identity highly ambivalent. The third section examines how the satire is broadened from human nature to political institutions in Gulliver’s dialogue with the king and account of Brobdingnagian society. The destabilisation of species boundaries and pessimism about human corruption in this voyage are key to the overall vision of Gulliver’s Travels.

The introduction recounts the life and writing career of Jonathan Swift, centred on his authorship of Gulliver’s Travels (1726). It provides an overview of the action of Swift’s masterpiece, placing the adventures of Lemuel Gulliver in parallel to the events of Swift’s life: his education, early career as secretary to William Temple, forays into satire, political writings during Anne’s reign, and Irish writings in the decade before he published Gulliver. The introduction establishes the circumstances of its publication, the different states of the text (and its paratexts), and some of the main critical attitudes to the work. It summarises the chapters within the volume.

Defoe came to professional writing amidst the first ’Age of Party’, when Tories and Whigs debated fundamental questions about the nature of government, the religious settlement, and international relations. Poets, pamphleteers, and periodical journalists scrutinized and speculated upon affairs of state in an expanding print culture, seeking to shape public debate, often on behalf of politicians. Defoe was among the most prolific and percipient commentators of his day but also one of the most vilified, being employed alternately by Whig and Tory ministries and hence denounced as a hack and a hireling. This chapter attests to Defoe’s underlying political principles: the 1688 Revolution’s establishment of contractarian government, the Protestant succession and toleration of Nonconformity, and a balance of power in Europe. But it also shows his varying degrees of success in remaining consistent at a time when circumstances forced him to expediencies and compromises which have shaped his legacy.